The artificial gravity lab
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it as an intuitive demonstration of the Coriolis effect and the practical problems of spinning habitats.
What it is
Tom Scott tours the rotating room artificial gravity facility at Brandeis University's Graybiel lab. It shows how humans cope with rotation-based gravity and the odd effects such as Coriolis forces.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2022 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends cm2187 · 2023-01 · on “Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?”
Coriolis force. It's pretty basic but I never really got it until I watched the Tom Scott video [this video]
Cites Retric · 2022-08 · on “134.5 kg Concrete Bike [video]”
The idea is much older for example 1948: [LINK] Various test chambers for astronauts where built to test how people respond to higher gravity / a rotating reference frame. Actually trying to do this runs into some unexpected issues in practice. Here is a Tom Scott video about a more recent example: [this video]
Cites vasvir · 2023-03 · on “Venus is volcanically alive, new find shows”
Artificial Gravity via rotation is no walk in the the park either. See: [LINK] for the long explanation. and the youtube example: [this video]
Cites inamberclad · 2023-10 · on “Microgravity-induced muscle atrophy in women/men in spaceflights to Moon/Mars”
EMS = electro muscular stimulation? No, not 100%. Astronauts have very good resistance training onboard the ISS at this point. Some of them come back to earth stronger than they left. However, it turns out that your body also needs skeletal loading in order to produce strong bones. That kind of loading comes from having large forces distributed through the entire body. NASA tried a variety of shortcuts around resistance training, but none of them were satisfactory. A spinning drum is probably the best method short of artificial gravity, but it has a couple problems. A rotating reference frame creates some pretty non-intuitive effects ( [this video] ). Research is ongoing about just how fast a hum
Cites MobiusHorizons · 2025-06 · on “Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship”
Relevant Scott Manley video: [LINK] Relevant tom Scott video: [this video] There is a lot of research, but it’s not as simple as operating under real gravity. Makes many movements harder and can result in getting sick.