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- 2019 News
- Alain Sarfati, elected President of Université Paris-Sud
- A new technique to detect the topography of exoplanets
- Two students from UFR STAPS talk about their study in Russia
- Jean-François Le Gall, winner of the Wolf Prize for Mathematics
- A nanomedicine which relieves pain without the risk of addiction
- Three physicists acknowledged as outstanding referees by the American Physical Society
- Sponsorship agreement with Air Liquide for the Chair in "Another Kind of Physics"
- University Paris-Sud the winner of two European networks for Innovative Training Networks (ITN) doctoral training
- Signature of conventions between the French Anti-Doping Agency and University Paris-Sud
- Kenya: promising partnerships for the future
- Paris-Sud, top French university among the most innovative in Europe
- A student at the Olympics
- Franco-American seminar to boost our university exchanges
- Towards an understanding of the mechanism of transport of membrane lipids
- Paris-Sud University is one of the first 25 institutions accredited with “Choose France” certification
- Paris-Sud University is involved in a European University project along with its partners in the Paris-Saclay COMUE
- GATE is open
- Back to university 2019: welcome to Paris-Sud University!
- Breast Cancer : hormone therapy has a greater impact on quality of life than chemotherapy
- A great Welcome Day for our international students
- Diana Garcià Garcià, winner of the 2019 French Rising Talent Award
- Four researchers from Paris-Sud honored by the Academy of Science
- Graduates of Université Paris-Sud meet-up in Boston
- Publication of the decree creating the Paris-Saclay institution
- 2018 News
- The same fish apart from a few neurons
- Silicon LEDs
- Pulmonary arterial hypertension
- Paris-Sud students excel during a tournament between physicists
- Green light for the ARIEL mission
- Closer co-operation with Japan
- The paradoxical extinction of the most charismatic species
- Planck
- Marc Humbert, Winner of the 2018 European Respiratory Society Prize
- Cachan students shine at the French Robotics Cup
- Studying the magnetic thin layers by analogy with the physics of soap bubbles
- Success Story for the Erasmus Mundus SERP-Chem Masters
- Gene Therapy
- Inauguration of a new biology and health research infrastructure
- Université Paris-Sud is outstanding in the lastest rankings
- Predicting the response to immunotherapy with artificial intelligence
- Pathology and social interactions : Safety in numbers
- Adolescent depression: early signs and changes in brain development underscore the need for new preventive approaches
- Inauguration of International Talents Reception Point
- The Mascot robot successfully lands on its asteroid
- A new international Master's in Life Sciences and Health
- A better understanding of the molecular mechanisms of assembly of some viruses
- Université Paris-Sud warmly welcomed its international students
- Five Researchers from Université Paris-Sud have been honoured by the Academy of Science
- Paris Sud students experience weightlessness
- Four internationally-renowned figures are awarded Doctor Honoris Causa degrees by Université Paris-Sud
- An international programme in English for future sports event managers
- Visit by an American delegation
- The Emerald : a jewell to understand the evolution of early massive galaxies
- Université Paris-Sud will host the French Anti-Doping Agency at its Orsay campus
- HIV : Preventing entry into the cell
- 2017 News
- The Paris-Sud official shop is open
- Paris-Sud University, still among the Top 50 best universities worldwide
- And it was a success... like a flower
- Ultra-Fast Molecular Movie
- Cosmic rays with an extragalactic origin !
- Gravitational waves : fourth merger of black holes observed by LIGO-Virgo
- From Sotchi to the Faculty of Sport Science
- First observation of merging neutron stars
- Antibiotics affects the efficacy of immunotherapy
- Visit by a delegation of 19 representatives from Chinese universities
- Interview of Narendra Singh, our local EIT kickoff winner
- The turbulence of gravitational waves put into an equation
- Rosetta is revealing new secrets about the composition of comet 67P
- The Heating Rate in the Magnetic Environment around the Earth Estimated for the First Time
- 2019 News
- Science and society
Paris Sud students experience weightlessness
In October 2018, three students from Université Paris-Sud were chosen to take part in the 55th microgravity flight campaign organised by the National Centre for Space Studies (CNES).
On Earth, the only way of testing conditions close to weightlessness over a period of several tens of seconds is to board a plane and ask the pilot to pitch the aircraft at 50 degrees, before switching off the throttle: the plane continues its trajectory then follows a parabolic curve. No longer subject only to the force of gravity, it is in free fall. All the people and objects inside fall at the same speed, a weightlessness similar to that which occurs in the International Space Station.
The company, Novespace, a subsidiary of CNES, has an A310 “zero-G” (zero gravity) plane with specifically well-trained pilots. It offers scientists a series of free falls during which it is possible to perform experiments in weightlessness. Each year, CNES selects 3 student projects for their scientific quality and offers them the opportunity to participate in one of the “parabolic” flights. The “Phenomenology of the Stability of a Magnetic Fluid Sample in Weightlessness” (PSELA) project of Université Paris-Sud’s students is one of the winners!
An experimental device for ferrofluids
The team behind this project is made up of three Master’s graduates in fundamental physics from Orsay: Thibault Vieu, Clément Walter and Luc Barast. In 2016, they were part of the university’s first team to take part in the French Physicists’ Tournament, a competition that requires students to apply a research approach to a series of physics problems. One of the problems focused on the behaviour of a drop of ferrofluid (magnetic fluid) when exposed to a magnetic field produced by a magnet. Ferrofluids exhibit various morphological instabilities when exposed to a magnetic field and are the subject of current research in many laboratories.
Intrigued by the subject, the three students continued to work on this topic in their free time. Through both a theoretical and experimental approach, they conducted a comprehensive scientific study on the subject. Furthermore, their results have been judged to be of the level of researchers, confirmed by experts in the field, who recommended publication in the prestigious Journal of Fluid Mechanics, which they were placed on the front cover of.
A flight on board Air Zero G
In November 2017, they decided to continue their study of ferrofluids at the same time as their M2 Master’s courses. They made a case to apply for CNES’s zero G flight: their project aimed to study the effect of weightlessness on the shape of magnetic drops. Assisted by the technical team from the physics Master’s and the Laboratory of Solid-State Physics (Université Paris-Sud/CNRS), Thibault, Clément and Luc professionalised their experimental device, developed a physics experiment worthy of a research laboratory and demonstrated its compliance with the very strict safety standards drawn up by the Novespace engineers.
The field test took place on 4 October. After having spent two weeks at Mérignac (Bordeaux’s airport) to finalise the experiment’s set-up, the students boarded the A310 and conducted their experiments for 30 parabolas of weightlessness from 20 to 22 seconds each. Despite some unforeseen events, the experiments proceeded perfectly and the results are promising! It only remains for the data obtained to be analysed at the same time as the beginning of their careers: Luc Barast is beginning a thesis in chemical and physical oceanography at Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Clément Walter is working on artificial intelligence applied to cosmology research in and Thibault Vieu is starting a thesis in theoretical astrophysics at Université Paris-Diderot. Entirely unrelated to ferrofluids… but when a question goes around your mind… and the weightlessness will remain an exceptional and unforgettable experience!