#microgravity
Space sleep study to understand ageing
Tomorrow the first official British astronaut Tim Peake will blast into space for 6 months.
He’ll be doing lots of experiments and tests that aren’t possible on Earth because of the unique conditions on the ISS 400km above Earth. He’ll even be running the London Marathon from space.
But living in microgravity for so long will take a toll on his body; astronauts experience bone and muscle loss, diminished immune systems and increased inflammation, complaints that also are common in the elderly.
To help find out why this happens an experiment at the University of Surrey with the European Space Agency is mimicking the effects of microgravity. Young healthy men will spend two weeks living in the lab ‘normally’ before spending 60 days constantly in beds that are slightly tilted to simulate the microgravity on board the ISS.
By investigating how these conditions disrupt sleep and body clocks, the study will help figure out the genetic processes that contribute to the health problems experienced by both the elderly and astronauts in space.
Photos: NASA and Victor Zelentsov
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Scientists discover new field affecting metals solidification
A fundamental discovery that alters our current understanding of how metals solidify and form crystalline patterns may help lead to better control of casting and welding processes. It also explains how snowflakes and many mineral patterns form naturally.
Reexamining data from his 20-year-old NASA experiment involving the repeated freezing and melting of high-purity materials in microgravity, Martin Glicksman, research professor in materials science and the Allen Henry Chair at Florida Institute of Technology, working with Kumar Ankit at the School of Matter, Transport and Energy at Arizona State University, discovered the way nature guides formation of complex patterns in materials that crystallize.
Glicksman discovered an energy field affecting all crystallizing substances, which he labeled the bias field that he believes is nature’s way of guiding cellular and branching dendritic microstructures that form during solidification of most metals and alloys.
“In the last phases of melting, needle-like crystals suddenly changed to spheres, and so for the first time ever, as we watched stationary particles melting in microgravity and observed their rather remarkable shape change,” Glicksman said.
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