Shock tube studies bring astronomical understanding light years
closer Because of their massive size, often-fleeting nature, and
distance from Earth, celestial bodies and events such as
nebulae, galaxies, stars and supernovas are difficult, at best,
to understand. Scientists’ knowledge of these astrophysical
phenomena is limited primarily to observations they glean from
images like those sent back from the Hubble Space Telescope. At
the University of Wisconsin-Madison, however, engineering
physics researchers are conducting unique, centimeter-scale
experiments that may shed light on astronomical events and
processes that shape the universe. The January 2008 Journal of
Fluid Mechanics features their research on its cover. The
researchers’ tools include a 10-meter-tall shock tube, some
high-speed imaging technologies, a couple of gases, and a
4-centimeter soap bubble. “It turns out that the physics that
happens at this scale is also the same physics that happens at
astrophysics scales,” says Mark Anderson, a se