Experiments may serve as microgravity effects model

Researchers at Nottingham University found that the levitating flies walked faster than normal — the same effect observed in earlier experiments on board the International Space Station and Shuttle.

‘In the original experiments it wasn’t clear whether it was microgravity that was causing these effects because they had to compare the behaviour of flies in space with a control group of flies on the ground,’ Dr Richard Hill of Nottingham told The Engineer.

‘Despite all their efforts to ensure each group of flies had gone through the same environmental conditions, the flies on the ground had not gone through all the launch procedures which involved cold storage, transport to the launch site, then high g-forces endured on board. We can be quite confident now that the changes in behaviour were down to microgravity… and that we can simulate that on the ground.’

Their experiments rely on a phenomenon called diamagnetism. Unlike ferromagnetic materials such as iron, which are strongly attracted to magnetic fields, most biological materials are weakly repelled from magnetic fields.