• Question: can you cry in space?

    Asked by 10toyetunji to Ed, Hayley, Jason, Nathan, Sophie on 10 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Hayley Evers-King

      Hayley Evers-King answered on 10 Mar 2013:

      You can cry in space, but because of the reduced gravity compared to on Earth, the tears don’t fall down in little drops. Instead they stay around your eye and apparently they sting quite a bit! If you cry enough they can float off in little balls. This is something the Commander Chris Hadfield spoke about on twitter recently – he’s living on the International Space Station at the moment. You can follow what he’s doing here: https://twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield

    • Photo: Sophie Holles

      Sophie Holles answered on 10 Mar 2013:

      Interesting… Do you mean in a spaceship, or space suit, or actually out in space? Obviously you would suffocate if you were actually in space with no suit or ship, but if you did survive and manage to cry I think your tears would instantly boil because there would be no pressure to push all the water molecules together into a liquid!

    • Photo: Edward Bovill

      Edward Bovill answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      In the vacuum of space, all liquid water would immediately boil away due to the lack of air pressure. This means that if you were unfortunate enough to end up in the vacuum of space and were crying, your tears would evaporate directly out of your tear ducts.

      If you were inside a spaceship of some kind then the tears would form perfectly spherical drops that would float away from you until it hit something. They wouldn’t fall down your face as they do on Earth as there is no gravity in space.

      If you want to know how long you’d survive in the vacuum of space, check this out:
      http://www.oneplusyou.com/q/v/space_vacuum

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