We have probably all been there: when you wake up too early, start thinking about stuff, and something starts to bug you. Yesterday afternoon I was mucking around on Facebook when I came across a video tour of the International Space Station. It was pretty cool as it showed you all kinds of cool stuff, following an astronaut as she floated gracefully around the station. What caught my attention most, though, was how the film lacked any sense of up or down. In usual films, we know that the ground will be at the bottom of the screen and the ceiling or sky will tend to be at the top. In the ISS video, however, the camera was able to roll and turn and we didn’t loose any sense of up or down because up and down don’t really exist in space. That struck me as cool.

Thinking about it in bed, though, something started to bug me. I remember, from GCSE Science over twenty years ago, that our sense of balance is controlled by a part of the ear: that in some piece of our ears we have some kind of liquid which keeps us steady. We feel dizzy when this ear-goo is disturbed. What is currently puzzling me is that, presumably, the goo depends on gravity pulling it downwards and keeping it level. In space there is no gravity, so can someone please explain why astronauts aren’t permanently dizzy? I hope I’m not being stupid here, but this really struck me as odd: why wasn’t the lady in the video, her hair floating like seaweed in the ocean, not constantly disorientated?