Is There a Real Up and Down in the Universe?

By Insane Curiosity

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Look at any map of the Earth and north is on top. From the globe in a classroom to the map app on your phone, it is always the same: north up, south down. You have seen it so many times it feels like a law of nature. But carry that map out into space and it falls apart instantly. In the void, there is no ceiling and no floor. No wall with an arrow that says this way is up. So here is the question that is going to pull the floor out from under you. Are we actually lost out here, drifting in a chaos with no directions at all? Or is there some hidden reference, a kind of cosmic north, that we have been ignoring this whole time? The answer is stranger than either option. Because it turns out the Earth is traveling through the galaxy lying almost on its side. The sun is racing through the Milky Way tilted at a steep angle. And our entire galaxy is falling, this very moment, toward something we cannot even see. Almost nothing about the way you picture up and down survives contact with the re

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