Subzero learning environment enabling avalanche research
A recent article about avalanche research in Popular Science referred to the effort toward knowing more about the avalanche in its subhead as "snowslide science," and the article was about the interesting lab work going on at Montana State University (MSU). Lab work? Do they want to replicate an avalanche in a lab? That is what they are doing, in attempting to understand more about such disasters. Sarah Zhang in Gizmodo called the lab "a mountainside in miniature." The scientists go to the Subzero Science and Engineering Research Facility when they are ready to study the effects of the cold on projects across many scientific disciplines. The Subzero Lab occupies 2,700 square feet and includes eight room-sized cold laboratories; three low-temperature biological incubators; two additional environmental chambers; a temperature-controlled computed tomography (CT) scanner; and a refrigerated epifluorescence microscope. MSU scientists there are probing for avalanche answers.