Hard drive recovered from space shuttle Columbia

Phinperor · May 6, 2008

Hard Drive Recovered from Space Shuttle Yields Data:

Although it's been several years since the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, it looks like some of the data gathered during the orbiter's final mission will be put to good use. A hard drive salvaged from the wreckage contains the results of an experiment to study the way xenon gas flows in microgravity, and the results were published in the April edition of a journal called Physical Review E. The 400MB Seagate drive was originally thought to be destroyed, but workers and engineers reconstructing the orbiter from the remaining debris found it during the process and sent it off for recovery, where 99 percent of the data was extracted. It then took several years for lead researcher Robert Berg and his team to analyze the findings, but they're happy with the results -- we only wish they hadn't come at so dear a price.

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Hard Drive Recovered from Columbia Shuttle Solves Physics Problem: (more in depth info here)

The hard drive contained data from the CVX-2 (Critical Viscosity of Xenon) experiment, designed to study the way xenon gas flows in microgravity. The findings, published this April in the journal Physical Review E, confirmed that when stirred vigorously, xenon exhibits a sudden change in viscosity known as shear thinning. The same effect allows whipped cream and ketchup to go from flowing smoothly like liquids to holding their shapes like solids.

Although the CVX-2 results may not change anyone's life, Robert "Bobby" Berg, the lead investigator for CVX-2 and a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., says the publication caps a 20-year research project that has occupied his thoughts daily since 2003. "It was a load off my shoulders to finally get it published," says the 52-year-old researcher.

The CVX-2 experiment was designed to measure xenon's viscosity close to the critical point, or the combination of temperature and pressure at which liquid and vapor are essentially indistinguishable. Near that point, a gas should "twinkle," Berg says, as droplets quickly condense and evaporate within the thick fog. According to the theory behind shear thinning, as an object swishes through these droplets more vigorously, it should begin slicing through individual droplets and hence feel less resistance...

source <--Full Article from SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN here.
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