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15th Oct 2017

This video proves that fidget spinners are actually extremely cool if you take them into space

Astronauts on the ISS filmed themselves playing with fidget spinners in zero-gravity

Rich Cooper

Yeah, read that headline again: fidget spinners are actually extremely cool.

They are, of course, not, but then we’ve only experienced them with the full effect of gravity working on them, and can you really say you’ve given something a thorough critical analysis if you haven’t tested it in zero-gravity?

Us normies don’t have much access to zero-gravity, which is why we have astronauts out in space to do this kind of thing for us. They probably do a bunch of other sciencey shit too, but that’s not what we’re here for.

NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik, currently stationed on the International Space Station, uploaded a video of himself and other astronauts mucking about with fidget spinners in zero-gravity, and the results are actually pretty cool.

“A fidget spinner in space!” Bresnik wrote. “How long does it spin? I’m not sure, but it’s a great way to experiment with Newton’s laws of motion!” That’s just about the most adorably nerdy way of saying, “Let’s dick about with a fidget spinner!”

Thanks to the lack of friction, coupled with the floating-in-mid-air thing, space has managed to pull off the impossible: it made fidget spinners cool.