Overview

• Social media users raised doubts after a Tiangong Class video showed a glass of water resting motionless in microgravity.
• Experts including University of Chicago historian Jordan Bimm explained that water molecules cling to glass and each other through surface tension.
• The full clip reveals a Chinese astronaut filling the glass with a straw and securing it to the table using Velcro.
• Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok intensified confusion by wrongly asserting that water would float out of an unsecured container in space.
• The demonstration was part of the Tiangong Class program teaching students how buoyancy operates differently in microgravity by suspending a ping-pong ball in water.