Latest Magnetohydrodynamics Stories

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online One who didn't know better would think that the closer you get to the sun, the warmer you are. However, it is actually the outer edge of the sun that you would find to be scorching, compared to the surface, and one study sought to find out why. Scientists from Northumbria University wrote in the journal Nature Communications that they used solar-imaging technology to observe the Sun's chromosphere, which is a region of the Sun's...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Scientists writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) said the magnetic gravity fields of Earth are going through some changes. Earth's magnetic field is generated by flows of liquid iron in the outer core. The Earth's magnetic field protects us from cosmic radiation particles. By understanding these processes in the outer core, scientists are able to have a better grasp of the terrestrial shield....

News from the 53rd Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics To achieve nuclear fusion for practical energy production, scientists often use magnetic fields to confine plasma. This creates a magnetic (or more precisely "magneto-hydrodynamic") fluid in which plasma is tied to magnetic field lines, and where regions of plasma can be isolated and heated to very high temperatures—typically 10 times hotter than the core of the sun! At these temperatures the plasma is nearly...

Physicists working in space plasmas have made clever use of the Ulysses spacecraft and the solar minimum to create a massive virtual lab bench to provide a unique test for the science underlying turbulent flows.Researchers have an ideal mathematical model of turbulence in fluids (ideal because the model is of an infinitely large flow). They also have been able to measure how such turbulence builds over time  by measuring how that turbulent flow of material fluctuates as it crosses or hits...

Experiments capture behavior of stressed magnetic fieldsMagnetized plasmas occupy a large fraction of our cosmic universe; they exist on our sun, in the earth's magnetosphere, and in astrophysical plasmas. They also exist in laboratory magnetic fusion grade plasmas, and in other smaller experiments as well. Energy stored in stressed magnetic fields can produce large-scale explosive events that spontaneously evolve and energize particles, owing to unsteady and impulsive local processes in...

Researchers at the University of Warwick have found what could be the signal of ideal wave "surfing" conditions for individual particles within the massive turbulent ocean of the solar wind.  The discovery could give a new insight into just how energy is dissipated in solar system sized plasmas such as the solar wind and could provide significant clues to scientists developing  fusion power which relies on plasmas.The research, led by Khurom Kiyanai and  Professor Sandra Chapman in...

400 years of discussion and we're still not sure what creates the Earth's magnetic field, and thus the magnetosphere, despite the importance of the latter as the only buffer between us and deadly solar wind of charged particles (made up of electrons and protons). New research raises question marks about the forces behind the magnetic field and the structure of Earth itself.The controversial new paper published in New Journal of Physics (co-owned by the Institute of Physics and the German...

Plasma physicists have made an unprecedented measurement in their study of the Earth's magnetic field. Thanks to ESA's Cluster satellites they detected an electric field thought to be a key element in the process of 'magnetic reconnection'.Thanks to these measurements, obtained by the eight PEACE electron sensors onboard the four spacecraft, scientists now have their first insight into magnetic reconnection's detailed behaviour. Magnetic reconnection is a process that can occur almost...

PASADENA, Calif. -- Applied physicists at the California Institute of Technology have devised a plasma experiment that shows how huge long, thin jets of material shoot out from exotic astrophysical objects such as young stars, black holes, and galactic nuclei. Reporting in an upcoming issue of the journal Physical Review Letters, applied physics professor Paul Bellan, his graduate student Gunsu Yun, and postdoctoral scholar Setthivoine You describe how they create jets of plasma at will in an...