• Question: Does your spine shrink when you come back from space?

    Asked by CCK to David on 21 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: David Robertson

      David Robertson answered on 21 Jun 2016:

      Yes. The same happens to you when you get up from a good nights sleep.

      Your spine is made up of lots of bones (vertebra) with squashy disks in between them to cushion them at let you move. When you are standing up all day these disks get a little more squashed so you get a little shorter. When you are lying down, or even better weightless in space, the disks expand a bit and you get taller.

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