Astro­naut Don Pet­tit is a chem­i­cal engi­neer by train­ing, and he is a man who loves his work. The video above, pro­duced as part of a series called “Sci­ence off the Sphere,” shows an exper­i­ment con­duct­ed aboard the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion. In it, Pet­tit demon­strates the way a water bub­ble reacts to puffs of air in micro­grav­i­ty. The results are fas­ci­nat­ing to watch, made more so by Pettit’s total absorp­tion in the exper­i­ment.

Dur­ing his first six-month stay on the ISS in 2002–3, Pet­tit also exper­i­ment­ed on how flu­ids react in zero-grav­i­ty. He dubbed these ses­sions “Sat­ur­day Morn­ing Sci­ence.” Pet­tit returned to the ISS in Decem­ber of 2011 and is still there, orbit­ing over 240 miles above the earth, con­duct­ing exper­i­ments in his free time and pro­duc­ing “Sci­ence off the Sphere.” Episode 5 of the series (below) is mes­mer­iz­ing, and again, Pettit’s won­der as he nar­rates the exper­i­ment is pal­pa­ble.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Great Cities at Night: Views from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

Drink­ing Cof­fee at Zero Grav­i­ty

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Time trav­el. Since Ein­stein for­mu­lat­ed his spe­cial the­o­ry of rel­a­tiv­i­ty, we have known that it is the­o­ret­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble, even if pop­u­lar notions of time trav­el have dete­ri­o­rat­ed slight­ly from the august H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine to… well, Hot Tub Time Machine. Which is to say that few people—lay or professional—take the con­cept very seri­ous­ly any­more. But Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut Pro­fes­sor Dr. Ronald Mal­lett still believes, and he has sought to real­ize his dream of mak­ing time trav­el pos­si­ble in this cen­tu­ry by infil­trat­ing the sci­en­tif­ic pro­fes­sion, becom­ing a respect­ed the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist, then brav­ing the ridicule and oppro­bri­um, or at least dis­agree­ment, of his col­leagues to begin work on a time machine.

In the video above, Dr. Mal­lett describes his expe­ri­ence of “risk­ing pro­fes­sion­al sui­cide,” and phys­i­cal pain, to work out his ideas. Since com­ing out, so to speak, as a pro­po­nent of time trav­el, Mal­lett pub­lished a mem­oir in 2006, Time Trav­el­er: A Scientist’s Per­son­al Mis­sion to Make Time Trav­el a Real­i­ty. It’s both a descrip­tion of his fifty years of sci­en­tif­ic work toward his project Space-time Twist­ing by Light (STL) and a mov­ing per­son­al nar­ra­tive of grow­ing up under seg­re­ga­tion, los­ing his father at a young age, and becom­ing one of the first African Amer­i­can the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cists.

Spike Lee has acquired the film rights to his mem­oir (though the project seems to be stalled), and Mal­lett has told his sto­ry on This Amer­i­can Life, CNN, and in speak­ing tours around the coun­try. Whether Mallett’s enthu­si­asm will trans­late into real­i­ty remains to be seen, but his pas­sion for Einstein’s pre­dic­tions is infec­tious and illu­mi­nat­ing.

The video comes from a new series from THNKR called EPIPHANY, a “dai­ly series invit­ing impas­sioned thought lead­ers across all dis­ci­plines to reveal the inno­v­a­tive, the improb­a­ble, and the unex­pect­ed of their worlds.” Each week is devot­ed to a new “thought leader.” Vis­it the EPIPHANY chan­nel to view the rest of Dr. Mallett’s “rev­e­la­tions.”

Anoth­er online source for infor­ma­tion, the Cas­siopeia Project, claims to “make sci­ence sim­ple.” In the video below, learn the basics of time trav­el and spe­cial rel­a­tiv­i­ty.

via Boing­Bo­ing