12 September

This astronaut is ‘floating in space’. (Actually they’re falling at high speed, but the experience is the same as floating.) Where we get terribly mixed up is assuming ‘space’ starts outside the atmosphere. But you’re in space right now, reading this. You have air around you, but the gravity on you is almost exactly the same as on this astronaut. You too are floating. (Not flying, which people often mix up with floating.) That pressure you feel under your feet or bum is not your weight. You can’t feel your own weight, it’s physically impossible. It’s you, floating human, having the Earth constantly pushing UP underneath you. The ‘ground reaction force’ in physics terms. Your weight presses on the ground, and the ground responds by pressing right back up into you, with an equal but opposite force. Try it. Stop going around all day assuming you have to hold yourself up against some force called gravity. It’s an illusion. Feel yourself like this astronaut, floating in space but having that ground constantly pushing up underneath you. It will change your life.