China builds 'artificial moon' for gravity experiment

The vacuum chamber will use magnets to recreate lunar gravity. The image is courtesy of Loic Venance.

Chinese scientists have built an "artificial moon" facility that will allow them to use magnetism in low-gravity environments.
The facility will use magnetic fields inside a vacuum chamber to make gravity disappear. The scientists were inspired by an experiment that used magnets.
The first of its kind in the world, the chamber will be filled with rocks and dust to mimic the lunar surface, and it could be maintained at a very low temperature, according to the South China Morning Post.

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The facility will be used to test technology in low-gravity environments before it is sent to the moon. This will allow them to iron out any costly technical issues, as well as test whether certain structures will survive on the moon's surface.

"Some experiments, such as an impact test, can be done in a few seconds," Li said. It can take several days for others, such as creep testing. A material is tested to see how much it will change under stress.

The inspiration for the chamber came from the Ig Nobel Prize winning physicist, who created an experiment that made a frog float with a magnet.

The levitation trick used by Geim and now in the artificial-moon chamber comes from an effect called diamagnetic levitation. The atoms are made up of atomic nuclei and tiny electrons that travel in loops of current. The randomly oriented magnetic fields of all the atoms in an object, whether they are a drop of water or a frog, are usually canceled out.

The electrons will modify their motion if an external magnetic field is applied to them. If the external magnet is strong enough, the magnetic force of repulsion between it and the field of the atoms will grow powerful enough to overcome gravity and levitate the object into the air.

China's lunar exploration program Chang'e takes its name from the Chinese goddess of the moon and will use the tests completed in the chamber to inform it. Chang'e 4 landed a rover on the far side of the moon in February of this year, and Chang'e 5 retrieved rock samples from the moon's surface in 2020. China will establish a lunar research station on the moon's south pole by 2029.

Live Science published the original article.