The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThank you for liking
You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!
Observing large but perfectly shaped bubbles in weightlessness and recording them with a high-speed camera is more than fun. Shining lasers on pure water creates vapour bubbles that collapse violently – for an instant they shine brighter than the Sun, like a miniature supernova. All this energy needs to escape somehow and the water bubbles eject high-speed water jets.
Hydraulic equipment on Earth suffers from the effects of such jets so learning more about how these bubbles work will help in designing better machines. And harnessing the heat from imploding bubbles offers promising medical applications by delivering precise bursts of energy and heat when needed.
This experiment started as a student proposal and evolved into fully fledged top scientific research.