When a fire extinguisher is opened, the compressed carbon dioxide forms ice crystals around the nozzle, providing a visual example of the physics principle that gases and plasmas cool as they expand. When our sun expels plasma ...
Space Exploration
Apr 15, 2020
17
661
Billions of years ago, in the center of a galaxy cluster far, far away (15 billion light-years, to be exact), a black hole spewed out jets of plasma. As the plasma rushed out of the black hole, it pushed away material, creating ...
Astronomy
Dec 24, 2019
25
886
New research from the University of Rochester will enhance the accuracy of computer models used in simulations of laser-driven implosions. The research, published in the journal Nature Physics, addresses one of the challenges ...
Plasma Physics
Dec 2, 2019
2
1041
Voyager 1 has a companion in the realm of the stars.
Astronomy
Nov 4, 2019
24
66129
Kinetic instabilities commonly arise from anisotropic (different properties in different directions) electron velocity distributions within ionospheric, cosmic and terrestrial plasmas. But only a handful of experiments have ...
How do researchers explore nature on its most fundamental level? They build "supermicroscopes" that can resolve atomic and subatomic details. This won't work with visible light, but they can probe the tiniest dimensions of ...
Optics & Photonics
Aug 13, 2019
0
1061
The sun's solar wind affects nearly everything in the solar system. It can disrupt the function of Earth's satellites and creates the lights of the auroras.
Space Exploration
Jul 29, 2019
67
913
Elasticity, the ability of an object to bounce back to its original shape, is a universal property in solid materials. But when pushed too far, materials change in unrecoverable ways: Rubber bands snap in half, metal frames ...
Condensed Matter
Mar 14, 2019
0
153
Most laypersons are familiar with the three states of matter as solids, liquids, and gases. But there are other forms that exist. Plasmas, for example, are the most abundant form of matter in the universe, found throughout ...
Plasma Physics
Mar 7, 2019
3
848
Combining a first laser pulse to heat up and "drill" through a plasma, and another to accelerate electrons to incredibly high energies in just tens of centimeters, scientists have nearly doubled the previous record for laser-driven ...
Plasma Physics
Feb 25, 2019
1
195
