Digestive gas gets the best of everyone sooner or later, often in the form of a burp. Burping is how the body clears excess gas from the upper digestive tract, which would otherwise result in extremely uncomfortable pressure in your stomach and esophagus.
Or at least that’s how it works on Earth. In space, everything works a little differently without gravity to help. So is it true that you can’t burp in space? The answer is messier than you might expect.
You can’t burp in microgravity the way you would on Earth, experts told Live Science. That’s because, unlike vomiting, which uses the muscles of your digestive tract to force food back up, the mechanics of burping depend completely on gravity. First, gravity helps separate the gassy ingredients of a burp from the liquid and solid remnants of food in the stomach; gas is lighter and thus floats to the top. So, before you burp, the stomach contains a layer of hot, sometimes smelly gas hovering above a swampy mix of partially digested food.
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