Hannahhaifisch - HH

Unusual fluid behavior observed in microgravity

Normally when a liquid is heated above its boiling point, it evaporates, turning into a vapor. But when scientists recently performed an experiment on the International Space Station (ISS), they observed that the vapor near a heat pipe condensed into a liquid even when the temperature was 160 K above the substance’s normal boiling point. The results show that microgravity significantly alters the processes of evaporation and condensation, but the scientists do not yet have a complete explanation for the phenomenon.

The research team, consisting of scientists from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the NASA Glenn Research Center, have published a paper on the surprising observations in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.

This is not the first time that unexpected behavior in heat pipes, which are devices used to cool components of a spacecraft, has been observed in microgravity. In 2015, many of the same researchers made a related, counterintuitive observation during experiments conducted on the ISS.

At that time, the researchers observed that increasing the heat input to a heat pipe did not cause the device to dry out near the heated end as it does on Earth, but instead it caused liquid accumulation there. At the time, the processes responsible for this phenomenon were not completely understood.

Read more.

Ernst Haeckel. Hexacoralla, Ascomycetes, Lichenes, Phaeodaria, Ophiodea, Spumellaria, Basimycetes, Diatomea, Amphoridea. Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms in Nature). 1899-1904.

Constellation de nuit pour papa ❤️ #origami #tessellation #papa

Mutation by Ben Butler 30″ x 32″ x 16″, cedar, 2006

Heartwood on Tumblr

Another Ferrofluid representation

In this short film, the Macro Room team plays with the diffusion of ink in water and its interaction with various shapes. Injecting ink with a syringe results in a beautiful, billowing turbulent plume. By fiddling with the playback time, the video really highlights some of the neat instabilities the ink goes through before it mixes. Note how the yellow ink at 1:12 breaks into jellyfish-like shapes with tentacles that sprout more ink; that’s a classic form of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability, driven by the higher density ink sinking through the lower density water. Ink’s higher density is what drives the ink-falls flowing down the flowers in the final segment, too. Definitely take a couple minutes to watch the full video. (Image and video credit: Macro Room; via James H./Flow Vis)

~ wikimedia commons

“paper works”, Hannah Reber, 2013, Berlin