Air resistance FTW. I'm betting if you threw a boomerang in a vacuum, it would go in a straight line.

Agreed, Zeph. Kinda cool that they don't depend on gravity though.

Its not so much air resistance that causes it, as it is bernoulli's principle in play. The boomerang is essentially a 3 winged air-foil (2 in the traditional sense), with the angle of attack set to create an equal thrust force in opposite directions, resulting in a torque (which also causes it to elipse as it does).

And I dont think youd find a sane man alive to take that bet. No fluid, means no pressure differential, means no net force in any one direction....which means no elipse.

Oh man, the first time I heard this I thought it WAS in the vacuum of space. Oh well.

Yes, I have to say wtf? I too thought when I heard about this "experiment" that it was performed IN SPACE (ie a vacuum). Anyone that thought that a boomarang couldn't work in a pressurized atmosphere and the absence of gravity does not deserve to be an astronaut. You don't need to send people into orbit to determine the outcome when you understand the principles involved.

The point of science is to question everything, no matter how obvious. The interesting wrinkle here is that without gravity a boomerang would actually stop eventually due to energy losses from viscous dissipation (you can see it slowing down by the end of the turn). While this is easy to show analytically, having a guy who is already up there doing all kinds of experiments throw a boomerang a couple of times proves expected theory elegantly and with a small cost ($2 boomerang).

>> ^Zeph:
Air resistance FTW. I'm betting if you threw a boomerang in a vacuum, it would go in a straight line.

I bet you it'd keel over and die due to lack of oxygen. Boomerangs are people too...

>> ^zomgg:
The point of science is to question everything, no matter how obvious. The interesting wrinkle here is that without gravity a boomerang would actually stop eventually due to energy losses from viscous dissipation (you can see it slowing down by the end of the turn). While this is easy to show analytically, having a guy who is already up there doing all kinds of experiments throw a boomerang a couple of times proves expected theory elegantly and with a small cost ($2 boomerang).


Good point. I think the comments reflect a disappointment in how the story was reported or that it was reported at all. Yes it is good to question everything and confirm with experiment. But this confirmation seems hardly news worthy unless you are a huge boomerang aficionado.

So now that we have that out of the way, maybe someday this will lead to boomerang tournaments in the space station.

Would a Frisbee fly straight with no gravity or go up/down because of air resistance? If there are temperature changes, I would think it would change altitude.

>> ^twiddles:
Anyone that thought that a boomarang couldn't work in a pressurized atmosphere and the absence of gravity does not deserve to be an astronaut.


Oh get over yourself. It's not at all obvious that a traditional boomerang should work in zero gravity as they have flight movements with respect to the gravity vector. See the diagram at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomerang

As typically thrown, the traditional boomerang relies on the presence of gravity to convert kinetic energy into potential energy (as it reaches the top of its arc), then back to kinetic energy in the opposite direction.

So maybe you can throw it differently and still have it return, but maybe not. It's NOT obvious, though. Your attitude stinks.

Oh I was over myself 25 years ago when I was taking aerospace engineering classes. Maybe you haven't noticed but I like to use hyperbole.

See charliem's note above for a description of what is happening. Note how zomgg corrected me on the usefulness of scientific experiment. Yeah my attitude stinks. Touche. And so does yours.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Thank the lord for space station freedom- I think it's safe to decommission now.

Seriously, what a white elephant - what kind of real scientific breakthroughs are we getting from space station alpha or freedom or whatever it's now called. I would much rather funding went to:

A) manned mission to mars
B) better/more space telescopes
C) More probes/rovers

D) Fusion reactors small enough to put in a space ship
E) Better Ion Thrusters
F) Electromagnetic interstellar gas collector to replenish fuel
G) Electric-lighted botanical gardens in space, fertilized by excrement
H) Combine D through G in a spaceship for a comfy 1000-year trip to Alpha Centauri and back.*
I) Now here's the one that requires changing the laws of physics: WARP DRIVE!!


*: Hydrogen fusion converts about 1/1000 of the mass into energy while burning hydrogen plus oxygen converts only 3/10,000,000,000 of the mass into energy. So you get about 3 million times more energy from your fuel per kilogram compared to conventional rockets. That means you can eject your exhaust about (the square root of that) 1800 times faster and go about 1800 times faster.

The fastest conventional rocket yet (Voyager 1) used several stages and gravity assists to get to about C/17,000 (17.46 km/s), which would be fast enough to get to alpha centauri and back in about 150,000 years. (150,000 / 1800) + slack = 1000 years.

Yeah yeah fusion reactor, ion thruster, 6 disc cd player whatever, as long as it has a nice bathroom.

In defense of twiddles, anyone who uses Wikipedia to back their argument, shouldn't be arguing.

^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentation_theory

>> ^swampgirl:
Yeah yeah fusion reactor, ion thruster, 6 disc cd player whatever, as long as it has a nice bathroom.


Or maybe just piss in the corn fields

You'll be accelerating all the time, which will feel like weak gravity.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Fusion reactors seems like one of those technologies that will be 20 years away from reality ... forever.

Latest stuff I've read about the tokamak is they still take in more energy than they produce. (though I enjoyed the cameo of a lookalike in Iron Man)

So it's not a matter of smaller fusion reactors- it's building ones that actually work as an energy source.

I hate boomerangs. They're handist against lefties.

>> ^zomgg:
The point of science is ... having a guy who is already up there doing all kinds of experiments throw a boomerang a couple of times proves expected theory elegantly and with a small cost ($2 boomerang).


(Devils advocate ) Yo Mon! just $2, and what about the cost for the time the scientist spent thinking about the question? What about the time he took to travel to the place offering boomarangs? He gets paid. And what about his educational expenses? What about the money he forfeited by not having a regular job and instead paying the university to provide him with knowledge and credential sufficient to hook a ride in the space station, where he tosses a boomarang? These all add up to an enormous sum - possibly even more. $2 ? I don't think so.

>> ^dag:
Thank the lord for space station freedom- I think it's safe to decommission now.
Seriously, what a white elephant - what kind of real scientific breakthroughs are we getting from space station alpha or freedom or whatever it's now called. I would much rather funding went to:
A) manned mission to mars
B) better/more space telescopes
C) More probes/rovers


I have to agree about the space station being something of a waste. I don't understand why we spent tons of money on the space station, without spending a ton of money trying to figure out how to get relatively cheap orbital lift first.

Aside from your B and C, I'd think NASA should be looking at every possible way to build a space elevator. If they could make that work, space would become a booming industry overnight.

>> ^rottenseed:
I hate boomerangs. They're handist against lefties.


http://youtube.com/watch?v=VgwEumGlCZo

Link disagrees with you >.>

The space station has helped us to understand and verify in far greater detail all those observations of newtonian physics, in micro-gravity. Sure, showing how things move and interact in air without gravity to effect it doesnt really give much immediate benefit, but if you were to think that way about all scienctific advance, then you would simply not have the internet.

Scientists didnt know that tinkering with electricity would eventuate into a telecommunications network where it allows ubiquitous connectivity anywhere in the civilised world, to them it was just some out-there cool thing, with no forseable advantages.

Same gos with lasers, radio's, cathode rays, penacillian...etc.

The list gos on.

To think that anything in science is not worthy of funding meerly because you cant forsee its benefits (and, devils advocate, its downsides; Manhattan Project anyone ?), and therefore should be forefit of funding, is an injustice to the scientific method of the highest order.

You take for granted the internet, your mobile phone, your television, your cars, your PDA, hell even your clothes. What you fail to realise is that without people funding seemingly useless scientific endeavours, NONE of it would exist as it does today.

Show some respect.

>> ^dag:
Fusion reactors seems like one of those technologies that will be 20 years away from reality ... forever.
Latest stuff I've read about the tokamak is they still take in more energy than they produce. (though I enjoyed the cameo of a lookalike in Iron Man)
So it's not a matter of smaller fusion reactors- it's building ones that actually work as an energy source.


That's dependent on the temperature of the surrounding environment. If you build it on titan and use liquid methane from titan's ocean as coolant, you save a huge amount of energy on keeping the superconductors cold enough to superconduct. If the coolant fluid from outside was below the transition temperature of the superconductors, this would vastly improve the efficiency of the tokamak. Inventing superconductors with higher transition temperatures would allow a similar improvement. The biggest amount of waste in the tokamok is from the fact that you have a huge heat/radiation source surrounded by superconducting electromagnets that have to be kept at 50 Kelvin or below.

Yay! Boomerangs are from *downunder!

Adding video to channels (Downunder) - requested by maatc.

1% of the US budget, (so says the little chart at NASA) goes to the space program, s'ppose after Nixon-but as intimate as NASA is with the military, this is hard to believe-If it is true, then damn, with 5%, we could already have a space elevator and 3 space stations....

> At an estimated cost of €100 billion[9] (~ $158 billion)
> for the ISS project from its start until the program's end
> in 2017,[10] the ISS will be the most expensive object ever
> built by humankind.[7]

Almost a third of the cost of the Iraq war so far. If it's a white elephant I want to see a zoo full of them.

Cecil Adams' take.