'Dust up' on International Space Station hints at sources of structure

'Dust up' on International Space Station hints at sources of structure

6 years ago
Anonymous $yysEBM5EYi

https://phys.org/news/2018-11-international-space-station-hints-sources.html

In a lab on Earth, electrically charged dust generally lines up either along the downward pull of gravity or across it. Scientists at the Center for Astrophysics, Space Physics, and Engineering Research (CASPER), at Baylor University, got a surprise when examining data from a similar experiment on the International Space Station orbiting 248 miles above Earth where gravity is much weaker. Rather than the dust bouncing around randomly, the dust often wiggled around in straight lines, even without gravity.

"Gravity on Earth is at least as strong as the electric forces between the dust grains. In microgravity we expected the dust particles to spread out," said Truell Hyde, director of CASPER, who leads the study. "Instead, we found that the small forces between the dust particles and the atoms in the plasma impose order on the system." Dr. Hyde and his research group are presenting their findings at the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics meeting in Portland, Ore.

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