Eye spy a foam
Image: Another fluid experiment joins long running research on foam stability on the International Space Station. The Foam-Coarsening experiment, developed by Airbus for ESA, is scheduled to be activated this month in the Fluid Science Laboratory in the European Columbus module.The foams come in self-contained cells, imaged above, and hold liquids that will be shaken (not stirred) and analysed with laser optics and high-resolution cameras. Researchers are keen to observe how foams behave in microgravity.On Earth, the mixture of gas and liquid that makes up a foam quickly starts to change. Gravity pulls the liquid between the bubbles downwards, and the small bubbles shrink while the larger ones tend to grow at the expense of others. Due to drainage, coarsening (or enlarging) and rupture of the bubbles, a foam starts to collapse back to a liquid state.But in space foams are more stable because there is no drainage in weightlessness. This...