Gravity in the form of gravitational waves currently is in the minds of many people. We all experience gravity. Jump up and return to earth. Unfortunately for everyone who wants to become a Superman. But what if you set gravity? If one day gravity will disappear, flying in space will be the lesser of two evils. Physicists are confident that this will never happen. But what prevents us to conduct mental experiments? And what the experts think on the subject of the sudden disappearance of gravity?
Tanks Jay, the doctor and one NASA astronaut, told how the absence of gravity affects the human body. Our bodies adapted to the gravitational conditions of Earth. If we live awhile where gravity is different (e.g., aboard a space station), our body is changing.
Already for anybody not a secret that the glory of the astronaut is a bit marred by the loss of bone mass and muscle strength during his stay in space, so does the sense of balance.
The lack of gravity causes problems. Not quite understandable reasons, dropping the number of red blood cells, resulting in a special form of “space anemia”. Wounds heal longer, the immune system loses strength. Even sleep is disturbed in the absence or weakening of gravity.
This is what happens after a short visit to space. “What would happen if we grew up without gravity? — asks Bucky. — What about systems that depend on gravity, like muscles, balance, heart, blood vessels?”.
There are good reasons to believe that the human body will develop differently.
Bucky gives the example of an experiment in which a cat was raised with one eye closed with a bandage. As a result grew up blind in one eye. The scheme, which connects the eye with the brain, simply are unable to develop, because the eyes did not process any visual information. As they say, if it was stolen, so didn’t watch, so no need.
Quite possibly, other parts of our body will develop in a similar way. If gravity will not influence our heart, muscles and bones, our bodies will develop differently. Goes, without gravity we would need to think about long-term plans of development of mankind.
Karen masters, an astronomer at the University of Portsmouth in the UK, examines direct physical consequences of the loss of gravity. The first problem is that the Earth rotates at high speed, like a sinker on a fishing line that you spin over your head.
“Disabling gravity will be similar to the tear line, writes masters. — Things that are not attached to the Earth, will fly into space in a straight line”.
The one who is not lucky to be outside at this moment, will be lost forever. People inside buildings will be more lucky, because the building is firmly rooted in the ground and can stand even without gravity — at least for a while.
The first into space will leave the Earth’s atmosphere and its oceans, rivers and lakes. And, of course, we all die. The lack of gravity also will sentence our planet. The Land itself will break apart and go floating into space. Similar will be the fate of the Sun. Without gravity holding it together, the core would simply explode under the pressure.
Similar thing would happen with all the stars in the Universe. But since they are far away, it will take years before the light will take the news of their sudden demise. Eventually there will be no clumps of matter, no stars, no planets, nothing. Will just diffuse soup of atoms and molecules floating around.
This scenario — which, by the way, so you’ll remember will never happen — illustrates how closely gravity governs the behavior of the Universe. This is one of the four fundamental forces governing the Universe. The other three are important too. Without electromagnetism, strong and weak interactions, the atoms would burst apart. But gravity is still the most interesting of them — otherwise we are not so inspired like the thought of anti-gravity.