FImage: PPPL physicist Hantao Ji in front of the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment
Credit: Elle Starkmann
Physicists at DOE PPPL have for the first time directly observed a phenomenon that had previously only been hypothesized to exist. The phenomenon, plasmoid instabilities that occur during collisional magnetic reconnection, had until this year only been observed indirectly using remote-sensing technology. They created the phenomenon where they could measure it directly and confirm its existence on the electron scale, which describes the range of motion of electrons and how quickly they move.
Plasmoid instabilities create magnetic bubbles within plasma, superhot gas whose atoms have separated into electrons and atomic nuclei...
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