What happens when you spin a fidget spinner in zero gravity? Watch this video from space
Bonus: astronauts trying to be fidget spinners.
Do astronauts have time to kill? And is that why a NASA fidget spinner, complete with a NASA logo, has made its way up to the International Space Station?
And that gives rise to the all-important question: How long can a fidget spinner spin in zero gravity?
Astronaut Randy “Komrade” Bresnik and his colleagues decided to experiment. Naturally, they made a video (above).
Bresnik explains the science behind the fidget spinning, in the caption: “Allowing the fidget spinner to float reduces the bearing friction by permitting the rate of the central ring and outer spinner to equalise, and the whole thing spins as a unit.”
But nobody quite knows yet how long it spins up there.