NASA ISS Image: Western Europe at Night

With hardware from the Earth-orbiting International Space Station appearing in the near foreground, a night time European panorama reveals city lights from Belgium and the Netherlands at bottom center.

The British Isles partially obscured by solar array panels at left, the North Sea at left center, and Scandinavia at right center beneath the end effector of the Space Station Remote Manipulator System or Canadarm2.

The image was taken by the station crew on Jan. 22, 2012.

Image Credit: NASA

London, Brussels and Amsterdam from Space

London – Brussels – Antwerp – Rotterdam – Amsterdam and seemingly countless towns and villages sing out on this peaceful night.

A nightscape that reveals familiar coastlines, prominent ports, and metropolitan areas.

The UK can see how much of the population is congregated around London and the South of UK.

They can also see the high energy useage in these areas.

How to Mix Oil and Water: A la Belgique!

Scientists in Belgium have uncovered a new way to shake things up. Violent bouncing of a water droplet coated with oil causes the oil layer to move inside and fracture into many oily globs. In a paper published in the December Chaos, researchers at the University of Liège in Belgium call this microemulsion of oil and water the mayonnaise droplet.

sciencenewsFrom earlier experiments, researchers knew that oily droplets bounce several times on a bed of oil before merging with the oil base. But Denis Terwagne and colleagues wanted to know what would happen to an oil-coated water droplet if the bouncing was prolonged. To find out, the team constructed a moving base that would quickly raise and lower the oil bed, similar to using a horizontal Ping-Pong paddle to keep a ball bouncing.