Physicists have recreated the solar wind in the laboratory

American physicists managed to recreate gusts of sunlight in laboratory conditions and for this they used a specially created apparatus "Big Red Ball" (Big Red Ball), inside which a very simplified model of our star was modeled.

To achieve this effect, a small amount of helium was placed inside the device, where pressure was created about a billion times lower than atmospheric pressure.

The applied voltage of 200 - 400 volts converted the gas into plasma, which formed a sphere around the super-powerful dipole magnet located in the center. That's right, scientists have managed to simulate an extremely simplified model of the sun.

Using transverse currents from the grounded anode to the cathode, the engineers were able to spin the plasma inside the sphere.

After that, it was decided to increase the plasma rotation speed to the so-called Alfvén velocity (this is when the plasma moving along the magnetic lines begins to leave the zone of influence of the magnetic fields).

Thus, it was possible to obtain a Parker spiral.

Of course, in an extremely simple way.

The observed behavior of the plasma in the created apparatus made it possible to draw the following conclusions:

• The first thing that scientists realized was that the magnetic field twisted in this way really has the shape of an Archimedean spiral (Parker's spiral is just one of many varieties).
• Second. The formed bunches of plasma were formed exactly at such a distance, as predicted by theoretical calculations. And the resulting plasma clots really moved away from the "mini sun" with super-Alfven velocities. And this fact fits well into the Hall magnetohydrodynamics theory.

Despite the fact that the laboratory facility does not recreate all conditions of the heliosphere (in particular, so far it is impossible to simulate the gravitational effect of the sun in the laboratory), scientists are optimistic.

And they plan to use the "artificial sun" to study such phenomena as the solar wind and the formation and arrangement of magnetic fields of stars of the Sun class.

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