Welcome to BrainStuff, a production of I-Heart Radio.

Hey Brain Stuff, Lauren Bogobom here.

Imagine that you're inside a vehicle or other machine is spinning around so fast that the force

presses your body against the wall or seat. As you spin faster and faster, the

pressure forcing you against the wall increases, and conversely, it decreases as the

spin slows down. The weight feels just like the force of gravity that keeps your body grounded

to the earth. If you are like many people, your most dramatic experience with this type of spinning force is probably from an amusement park ride, a maybe the classic rotor ride that has produced a great deal of joy and yes vomit since the middle of the 1800s

but a handful of people including astronauts and military pilots experience the same phenomenon in a human-rated

centrifuge which is a machine that spins to produce these high-G forces which can be

summarized as forces that cause the perception of weight, like acceleration,

deceleration, and quick shifts in direction, like on a roller coaster, aboard

high-performance aircraft during high-speed turns during launches into space, and when spacecraft's rapidly slow as they re-enter Earth's atmosphere.

And like in these rotating machines.

In a very real sense, this type of rotation produces gravity, artificial gravity to be precise.

It provides weight to your body, a weight that your bones and muscles can't distinguish

from the weight that Earth or another planet provides on

account of its sheer mass.

Consequently, for decades, science fiction writers have envisioned rotating spaceships that

create artificial gravity for astronauts

during the longest phases of space missions.

These phases are when they are not extra heavy due to the ship accelerating to build up speed

or decelerating in the atmosphere, but when they feel relatively

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