I may be missing something, but why would a boomerang not work in an a sealed environment with breathable air inside? Gravity or not.

Well...sure they would come back!

The aerodynamics don't change, just the effect of gravity.
Now if it really WAS in space then things would go very differently.
THIS in in a air-filled habitat in space, so the rules stay the pretty much the same.

What a great video though!

I don't understand. Why wouldn't a boomerang work in zero (or micro) gravity as long as there is still air for it to fly through. It's not as if the guy made a boomerang that works in a vacuum. Have him throw it outside of the space station and see if it comes back.

Does this video remind anyone else of a sad lonely kid in his room with no friends...?

Astronauts. Life's Uber nerds. Weightless.

What does this prove?

@jdhuck: You beat me to the draw, varmint.

@bms: Proves that living in a space station is boring.

@bms: That the preferred weapon in a space station is a boomerang and not a Desert Eagle.

I can't even get the damned thing to work here on Earth. As far as I know, the whole concept is a myth. This video was fake! They didn't really land a man on the m-....I mean throw a boomerang in space!

@LoganSix: I concur, the DEagle might have some unwanted side-effects, including swelling, compression, asphyxiation, and possible death.

@baltwade: My apologies. I had some pressing, pent up rhetoric that needed to be vented this morning. If I didn't get it out, furry animals would suffer greatly.

Its a fake video!!!! Obviously!

Vid no longer available

@nystreetfilms:
I would check that man's itinerary before casting any hasty judgments as to his free time.

Those folks work an extremely hectic schedule every day they are up there, and they did a LOT of hard work to be chosen for the crew.
This might not even be free time, but a scheduled video being made for educational purposes.

Even if it WAS free time I'd say the man has MORE than earned it, so uh, let him play a little while he's up there, okay?
I'm sure he'd do the same for you. :)

I am on the "duh" boat. However, imagine a paper airplane. It would fly, but not crash. So, the question is, would the aerodynamics of the boomerang act a little differently sans gravity - apparently not too much.

He really wanted to do a study on the anti gravity effects on the bounce ratio of women jogging in space, but those cheap bastards at Nasa said no.....

Alrighty, obviously I am convinced, but I still dont understand why. The spinning wings of the boomerang create lift as well as the directional forces. However, eith no gravity, what is working to counteract the lift? As long as there is air, the wings will create lift, and you can see the effects when the boomerang arcs up towards the ceiling. The force from the toss creates the foward movement, but not lift... I'm confused :[

@Curves: I would aid in the funding of such an experiment.

@Curves: Well, technically JAXA, but no biggie.

But the idea of sending women into space to measure bounciness sounds intriguing. I imagine bounciness would be negatively affected by a zero gravity environment, as would the need to wear a bra...

@Babysealclubber: Aww crap, I completely missed an opportunity to use the word titillating...

Next time.

Yeah but what about a plane on a treadmill?

Nasa must have engineered that boomerang! i've never seen one work so well. I wanna go to space! :-(

If were in a space station, alone, with a video camera, i'd be setting the world record for most continuous backflips done in one jump.

@James: @sqeakytoy of the apocalypse: Seems to me, as I try to recall throwing boomerangs around as a kid, that you had to angle them to achieve lift as well as the force that makes it curve in flight (think of a helicopter flying around in a large circle.) In a no gravity environment, I imagine you would throw it perfectly vertically to have it swoop around on a path that's horizontal relative to you.

my tax money at work :(

oooh, we had a long discussion about the news of boomerang in space. It seems I was right now, space -in this case- means no gravity, though it is not space as in vacuum.
I like to be correct :)

As a youth i'd learned how to throw a nerf boomerang. I can't do it for the life of me now. But, really... zero g and you throw a boomerang? I'd just do flips. Constantly. Oh, and make shit look like its levitating out of my hand. Yea.

@jdhuck: "I may be missing something, but why would a boomerang not work in an a sealed environment with breathable air inside? Gravity or n"

Exactly !

This has absolutely nothing to do with gravity at all_ It's aerodynamics_ In this case pure aerodynamic 'cause of the lack of gravity_ But that boomerang should be able to fly thru a methan atmosphere just as easy as the artificial one on the Space Station or Shutle_

I've got one - why not find out if the light shuts off when you close the refrigerator door?

Does a tree fall in the woods if no one is around to hear it?

I am so glad the tax-payers spent all that damned money to build the space station all for the purposes of finding out whether a boomerang will fly in zero G_

Can we please move on to something less retarded?

Having actually thrown boomerangs in my day, you'd just need to adjust the angle of attack (the angle at which you do the initial throw) to counteract the lack of gravity. A boomerang is thrown at a slant to give it enough lift to counteract gravity, whereas without that added lift the boomerang arcs too low. Gravity isn't required to make it work, it just changes the angle by which the aerodynamics work to maximum effect.

In short: You just toss the boomerang at a slightly different angle to account for the lack of gravity is all *shrug* Seems a simple enough concept to me.

Next we'll send a yo-yo.

@Furiursa: but what force is balancing the lift? Thats where I am getting lost. If you threw a pencil, it would keep going in a straight line; it doesnt generate lift. if you throw a lift producing wing, it will create an upward force as the air passes over it. Without gravity as a balance to the coefficient of lift, what keeps the force of lift from pushing the the boomerang into the roof? Yes it does seem simple, but parts of the equation are missing. There is not the same balance to the forces that allow it to work on the surface of the Earth.

@Gann: I was thinkg the same thing!

Congratulations, Australia! Can NASA find out if Eddie Murphy's movie, Boomerang, also works in space?

@Palestina: Yeah, they really need to get a Holodeck.

@slstsang:
Yup...we pay a few billion dollars for the space program for someone to go and...wait for it...throw a boomerang in space! WTF???

@sqeakytoy of the apocalypse: Yay! We have an observant winner!

lol of course it would work inside the spacelab. physics 101 people....

Stupid dits. The title should be "Boomerang in Weightless Environment." Space is what's outside the space vehicle, morons.

I just think that it is crazy he can throw that in such a confined space. I used to have a boomerang as a kid and that thing only kind of worked, and I needed a huge field to throw it in otherwise it wouldn't have enough room to come back.

@Curves: I wholeheartedly volunteer to devote however much time is needed to observe and study this.

It would seem that my concept of a "boomerang", and that tri-winged frisbee, are very different.

@sqeakytoy of the apocalypse: I think the idea is that by changing the angle, you don't generate lift in the first place. You still get the aerodynamics to turn the thing back to you, but not the lifting effect. On earth gravity would ull it to the ground before it got back to you; in space the same throw would work fine.

That said, I'm no scientist... but I can throw a boomerang.

@Gann: A yoyo will work on the space station too, and it would even work in the vacuum of space, unlike the boomerang.

@nosauten: exactly...hey NASA, why do you still exist? oh yeah...so i can watch some d-bag play with toys in space. NASA's contribution to society= Tang, Overpriced Memory Foam Pillows. Tax $ well spent.

Vid's no longer available on the main page, but works OK in the article. Just FYI.

Oh, yeah... and I don't think that counts as a boomerang- I was truly disappointed that it wasn't one of the traditional ones, but the three-pronged foam thingys. I've NEVER seen a traditional one work, though I'm sure if I weren't so lazy I could see one on YouTube in like 10 seconds. Bet the lack of gravity makes it easier, too, as there'd be less drop...

sorry but " The usual skeptics who think that Elvis is really the only human that ever went to the moon " should not be called skeptics, but really dumb and paranoid people.

@ArielWollinger: Thank you, I came here to comment about that. Someone who believes Elvis is still alive, or that the moon landing didn't happen, isn't a skeptic, they're a paranoid, conspiracy-theorist, moron. There's a pretty damn big difference. Skeptics take concepts that don't quite seem to add up and expect proof or better evidence before accepting them.

As for conspiracy theorists, keep in mind that videos have never convinced them. They're too easy to fix in post.