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Asked by finlay222 to Carol, Ellie, John, Philip, Rebecca on 24 Jun 2012.
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John Welford answered on 24 Jun 2012:
It is possible for humans to survive without gravity – astronauts do it. I don’t think it’s easy though. They have to do quite specific exercises to stop their muscles becoming too weak for when they return to earth.
It’s difficult to answer for earth. Planets automatically have gravity. If they didn’t I guess everything on them would just float off into space!?
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Eleanor Turpin answered on 25 Jun 2012:
Hi Finlay222,
This is a bit tricky to answer because without gravity the Earth would not exist at all. All the objects in space, like planets and stars, were formed from giant clouds of dust that collapsed in on themselves. And gravity is the force that caused them to collapse.
Gravity is a very important force and without it the universe would look very different – instead of having things in it, it would just be like a soup of little particles zipping around.
If the gravity on the Earth was suddenly turned off then we wouldn’t be able to live here – the atmosphere would disappear into space and the moon would fly away. Without the moon the Earth would be closer to the Sun and would be hotter so everything would get burned and the weather would become very extreme (thing 1000 mile per hour winds). Plus, if you jumped up then nothing would pull you back down so you would keep going until you floated off into the rest of the solar system.
Hope that answer your question.
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Carol White answered on 25 Jun 2012:
We could cope with low gravity, like astronauts do on the moon, but definitely not without it!
Gravity holds so many things down – people, buildings, power lines, cars and even the desk you’re sitting at now. If you were to “switch off” the gravity, nothing would have a reason to stay down.
Our bodies need gravity to stay in one piece, so it would be a very messy world without gravity…!
But it’s not just the little things (like people) that are affected… the Earth’s atmosphere and all its oceans would no longer be held down! This is why it would be so hard for us to live on the Moon, it doesn’t have enough gravity to keep an atmosphere around it.
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