Scientists in New Jersey have, for the first time, captured data around the “sloshing” (yes, that is the scientific term) which occurs when plasma interacts with powerful magnetic fields – something the researchers say could potentially provide “insight into the formation of enormous plasma jets that stretch between the stars” such as in black holes .
The academics at the US Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) created plasma by shining a powerful laser at a small plastic disk, and produced protons by using more lasers – 20, to be exact – at a capsule made up of hydrogen and helium atoms.
The heating up of the fuel eventually produced fusion reactions, a burst of protons and X-rays .
When such a burst of protons flowed through a mesh sheet containing tiny holes, they were split into separate beams bent by surrounding magnetic fields, with the results helping the team of scientists to understand “how the magnetic fields were pushed around by the expanding plasma, leading to whirl-like instabilities at the edges”.
These “instabilities” are known as magneto-Rayleigh Taylor instabilities, and a more familiar example of this is the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb.
A PPPL press release on the study – which was published in Physical Review Research back in June, reads: “Then, as the plasma’s energy diminished, the magnetic field lines snapped back into their original positions.
“As a result, the plasma was compressed into a straight structure resembling the jets of plasma that can stream from ultra-dense dead stars known as black holes and extend for distances many times the size of a galaxy.”
Will Fox, PPPL research physicist and the study’s principal investigator, added that the experiments show that “magnetic fields are very important for the formation of plasma jets”.
“Now that we might have insight into what generates these jets, we could, in theory, study giant astrophysical jets and learn something about black holes,” he said.
Meanwhile, lead scientist Sophia Malko helpfully describes the phenomena observed at the centre of the project as being like “when you pour milk into coffee” and lighter plumes of milk swirl against the darker coffee.
“During the interaction, lots of structures form where the fields meet the plasma because there are drastic differences in temperature, density and the strength of the magnetic field. It’s a perfect place for them to grow.”
She went on to say that it was “interesting” that humans could “make something in a laboratory that usually exists in space”.
Go science!
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