• Question: What is the machinery in the second work photo?

    Asked by Wardell'sAstronauts to COLFlight on 6 Oct 2015.
    • Photo: Columbus Flight Directors

      Columbus Flight Directors answered on 6 Oct 2015:

      Sergio:
      Hi!
      That is the German astronaut Alexander Gerst working on the ElectroMagnetic Levitator. In short we call it EML.

      With this super cool machine, we use a magnetic field to make a very hot bowl of molten metal levitate and then to keep it levitating while it gets cold and solid.
      In this way, we are then able to analyze how the atoms and molecules organize in crystals when they are not disturbed by gravity. We hope that this will help us producing stronger and lighter metals that could then be very helpful here on Earth.

      Here you can find some details about it:
      http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Blue_dot/Electromagnetic_levitator

      Who knows, maybe we’ll manage to obtain Wolverine’s adamantium 😉

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