Twenty-fifth set of plasma tests to start on International Space Station

Another set of experiments studying complex plasmas, taking place on the International Space Station (ISS), will commence at the end of January.

The new wave of experiments, which will be conducted in the ISS's PK-3 laboratory, will continue to study the behaviour of plasma in the absence of gravity. The results attained will be used by the Max Planck Institute for extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, who will study fundamental structure forming processes to better understand what happens in liquids and solids.

The ISS on-board experiments will deal with 'binary' complex plasmas, where two kinds of particles with different sizes are suspended in homogeneous plasma: one could expect them to mix due to mutual repulsion, but previous experiments aboard the ISS laboratory have shown a clear phase separation of the two particle clouds.

“This phenomenon is well known from many different systems, such as molecular liquids or colloidal suspensions, and has been studied for a long time,” says MPE-scientist and coordinator of the PK-3 Plus experiments, Hubertus Thomas. “In complex plasmas, for the first time we can now study these processes looking at the movement of individual particles and we hope that our latest experiments will lead to new insights into the physics of phase separation.”

Plasma is the fourth state of matter – beside the states of solid, liquid and gas – and is formed when gas is heated to very high temperatures so that its molecules dissociate in ions and free electrons.

For information on the research, contact Hannelore Hämmerle at hannelore.haemmerle@mpe.mpg.de

Published: Wednesday, 27th January 2010 by Tom Freeman

Comment on this article

Comments

No comments for this article, be the first to comment