Inside the boxes, light bulb behaviour is measured

During the 35th ESA Parabolic Flight Campaign, a 'frequent flyer' team from Eindhoven University and Philips in the Netherlands are investigating why high performance metal halide bulbs tend to flicker and become unstable in certain characteristic ways linked to convection currents and hence to gravity. Removing the influence of gravity changes the behaviour of the instabilities, and gives insights into why they are occur and how they can be designed out in future.