Experiments aboard the spaceship Columbia have disproved a theory on the human nervous system which won an Austrian professor a Nobel prize 79 years ago. West German astronaut Ulf Merbold disproved the theory during tests aboard the spaceship yesterday. His discovery is connected with the workings of the inner ear, the body's balance mechanism . In l914 Professor Robert Barany won the Nobel prize for Physiology  and Medicine when he announced that temperature differences affected the inner ear and caused the eyes to blink . His theory was accepted by scientists. But Merbold carried out tests to find if the theory was correct and shocked himself and space officials when he proved it wrong. According to Barany's theory the eyes would blink when cold air was blown into one ear and hot air blown into the other. But if this theory was correct such a movement would be impossible in zero gravity . Both Merbold's eyes continually blinked when the test was carried out. Barany's theory was proved incorrect in space by the effects of   _  .
having no weight having no air the pull of gravity hot and cold air streams