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- Last video, I was at the Ashton Graybiel
Spatial Orientation Lab at Brandeis University,

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and while I was there one
of the team just casually mentioned

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that they have an
artificial gravity laboratory.

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Artificial Gravity Facility sounds like
something out of science fiction,

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but it's not,
and there's very much a reason why

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I'm keeping my head straight
and forward at the moment.

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This is the Artificial Gravity Facility,
otherwise known as the rotating room.

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So, let's do some experiments.

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This is unscripted.
I don't know what's going to happen now,

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other than things are going very
weird when I move my arms.

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Okay, so it's a room that rotates.

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No one has invented science fiction
gravity generators yet,

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but if you have a theoretical
spaceship going to Mars

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and you wanted to
generate apparent gravity

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to keep astronauts healthy,
that's what you'd do.

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You would spin up the ship
and use centrifugal force.

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And that lab is the research prototype.

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How do humans deal with a
very strange gravitational environment?

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- The first thing that you should do is
try to push yourself off the wall

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and align your body with the
direction of the resultant.

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- Oh. Oh, okay!

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[laughter]

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- Now you're standing upright.

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- Wow. Can I walk, or is that gonna--

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- No, don't walk, it's a little dangerous.

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- It is almost impossible to envision

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long duration space flight
without artificial gravity.

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The best way to study
artificial gravity on Earth

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is to build a rotating environment.

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We started designing it in the mid-80s.

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Ideally we want to study its
effects on the human body

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and we want to learn also
how to pre-adapt astronauts

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to the force of artificial gravity.

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99.9% of those will be highly
dysfunctional individuals until adapted.

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- They have NASA-standard sick bags
for everyone, by the way.

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I was required to keep one in my
back pocket throughout just in case,

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because if you tilt your head too fast

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your inner ear has no idea what's going on
and things go... wrong, very quickly.

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- And now move your arm
and try to go as straight as you can.

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- [laughter]

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Oh, I moved my head.

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- You shouldn't move your head.
- Do you get used to this?

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- Yeah, yeah, you get used to it, yeah.
You can adapt.

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Move your arms and try to
feel this force that is...

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- Oh. That is...

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Okay, just to be clear,
I'm not putting this on,

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as far as I'm concerned,

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the signals I'm giving to my muscles are,
'move my arms forward'.

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And now I'm forcing them.

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But I'm pushing against
a force here, you know.

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- If you keep going, at some point
you won't feel the force anymore.

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- Oh that's weird.

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- That's weird, right?
- That's so weird.

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- So now we are adapted.

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- So if I try to do anything else,
I haven't adjusted to it.

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But that specific movement,
my body's got used to.

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- That's right.
- Wow.

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- One way to visualise this force

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is for me to try and throw a
little tennis ball at you.

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I will throw it straight at you,

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- Okay.

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- Okay.
- and see what happens, okay?

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- Whoa!

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What?

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[laughter]

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I'm struggling to work this out. Wh...

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Because, in my head, this
is a normal reference frame.

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But it's clearly not.
- We are rotating.

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And now I'm gonna throw it over there.

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- Yeah.
- And hopefully

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it's gonna get at you.
- Okay.

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- Are you ready?

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- Yeah, throw it.

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- Yes!

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- Ah nice.
- Great.

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[laughter]

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- Wow.

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All those artefacts are
from the Coriolis force.

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It's not a real force acting
on the ball, but it looks like one

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when you're in that
weird rotating environment.

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Have a look at this 360° image of the lab.

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Now, it's a little distorted because it's from
a single camera in the middle,

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but it's close enough.
Here's the tricky part:

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the circumference of a circle is longer
the further out you go from the middle.

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But because everything in that circle
is rotating at the same speed,

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once around every six seconds,

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things on the outside have
farther to travel, so they're

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moving at a faster speed
than things on the inside.

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On the outside, we're moving pretty fast,
but that camera in the middle

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is just spinning on the spot.

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So let's mark the sideways
speed that everything

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is moving at, relative
to the rest of the world.

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Green is fast, red is slow.

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When you throw a ball across
that room it keeps that

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sideways speed that it
had when it left your hand

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as it travels into slower
moving areas of the room.

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Now, out at the edge, that was fine.

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It was going the same speed
as everything around it,

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so it looked like it aimed for the centre.

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But by the time it starts to
get there, it's a missile,

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flying outwards compared
to everything around it.

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Now from the outside that make sense.

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After it leaves your hand, the ball

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just moves in a straight line.

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From the inside it looks like there's a force
suddenly sending it sideways,

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and that is the Coriolis force.

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And it's not something your brain
has evolved to deal with.

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- Now, if you move your arms,
you're pretty much fine.

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- Oh! I...

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[laughter]

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- Just by moving around,
you have been adapting.

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- That's ridiculous.
Thank you so so much.

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I'm gonna throw this at
you one more time, okay?

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[laughter]

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- The question that lab
needs to answer is:

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Can humans adapt to that over time?

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And if so, how long does it take them
to come back down to Earth?

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Let's bring this to a stop!

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Avi, can you bring us to zero?

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Bring your hands down and don't move.

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- I swear, the room is tilting--

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- Don't move!

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Oh, that's weird.

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- And we're stopped,
so try to swing your arms in front of you.

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[laughter]

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Oh, I don't like that.

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- You've been adapted.

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There are no unusual
forces on your arms but

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you feel it, right?
- But they're still, yeah,

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They're still doing that.

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- And now you have to re-adapt.

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- Thank you so, so much.

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Thank you so much to
everyone at the Ashton Graybiel

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Spatial Orientation Lab
at Brandeis University.

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Pull down on the description
for more about them and their work.