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A Ripple in Space (thelemmy.club)
submitted 1 day ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[-] Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 42 points 1 day ago

A kid I worked with loved airplanes. When he played, it became a running joke that there would randomly be "turbulence!" and he'd wiggle around.

One day, he was playing with another kid, but he was a rocket ship this time. The other kid, knowing his joke, decided to playfully bump into him and say, "turbulence!"

This little five year old, with his toddler-esque voice, often asks big questions that can be hard to answer. After this, he asked me, "Is there turbulence in space?"

I mean, yes and no? I explained that it's not turbulence like an airplane experiences, since there's not enough air in space to do that, but there are other forces that can act on a rocket that can change how it moves.

Thankfully, he didn't pry any further, because that's the extent of the knowledge I can ELI5 on that topic. ๐Ÿ˜…

[-] historicaldocuments@lemmy.world 26 points 23 hours ago

https://www.spaceweather.gov/

Pretty good resource for that kind of thing if you have another interested kid and access to the internet. There's also this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gravitation

[-] Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 19 points 23 hours ago

Oooh, thank you! I love adding resources like this to tabs on my work computer. The nature of my job means I'm sometimes with kids with vastly different interests, so the more resources, the better.

Off-topic, but if anyone has/works with a kid who loves dinosaurs and prefers visual information, I also have a neat dinosaur size comparison page bookmarked.

this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2026
562 points (97.8% liked)

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