Coriolis effect

Spinning Brains

One day, astronauts might travel through the solar system onboard spinning spaceships. Can human brains adapt?

.......July 23, 2004: Next time you go to a playground, try this: Bring along a ball and a friend, and get on the merry-go-round. Try throwing the ball to your friend across the ride from you, or even just a few feet beside you, and see if they can catch it on the first attempt.

They won't be able to, guaranteed. In fact, your throw will be way off. You'll feel your arm pulled strangely to one side as you make the throw, and once in flight, the ball will veer wildly.

Physicists call this the "Coriolis effect," and it happens on any spinning platform. Hurricanes swirl because of the Coriolis effect, the spinning platform being Earth itself. Contrary to popular belief, Coriolis forces do not control your bathroom drains--Earth doesn't spin that fast. But playing ball on a merry-go-round is definitely a Coriolis experience.

........"Experiments done in the 1960s seemed to show that people did not adapt well to rotation," says Lackner, the Meshulam and Judith Riklis Professor of Physiology at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. "But in those experiments, the subjects didn't have well-defined goals for their movements. We've found that when a specific goal is given for the motion, people adapt rather quickly."

......Other discoveries surprised the researchers, too. For example, after rotating for a while, people in their study no longer perceived the Coriolis effect. The veering pull on their arms and legs seemed to vanish. Their brains had compensated for it, so their minds no longer took notice of it.

Posted in http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/23jul_spin.htm?list1131735