{"id":163887,"date":"2023-05-14T22:22:53","date_gmt":"2023-05-15T03:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/a-lab-plasma-rotates-and-produces-jets"},"modified":"2023-05-14T22:22:53","modified_gmt":"2023-05-15T03:22:53","slug":"a-lab-plasma-rotates-and-produces-jets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/a-lab-plasma-rotates-and-produces-jets","title":{"rendered":"A Lab Plasma Rotates and Produces Jets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-lab-plasma-rotates-and-produces-jets2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A spinning plasma ring mimics the rotating structure surrounding a black hole.<\/p>\n<p>Astrophysicists have many questions about the so-called accretion disk that forms from plasma and other matter falling into a black hole. Now researchers have generated a rotating ring of plasma in an unconfined arrangement in the lab, which will enable more realistic studies of plasma in astrophysical disks [<a href=\"https:\/\/physics.aps.org\/articles\/v16\/81#c1\" class=\"\">1<\/a>]. The lab plasma also produced a jet perpendicular to the disk, as real black holes do. The experiment could provide a platform for testing theories describing the evolution of astrophysical disks.<\/p>\n<p>According to observations, the matter in a black hole accretion disk spirals inward at a rate that is thousands of times faster than would be expected from turbulence-free rotation. The leading explanation involves turbulence generated in part by the interaction of magnetic fields with the plasma in the disk, but this theory is difficult to test without a lab plasma that rotates rapidly. Such an experimental system would also allow researchers to investigate accretion disks around massive objects other than black holes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A spinning plasma ring mimics the rotating structure surrounding a black hole. Astrophysicists have many questions about the so-called accretion disk that forms from plasma and other matter falling into a black hole. Now researchers have generated a rotating ring of plasma in an unconfined arrangement in the lab, which will enable more realistic studies [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,385,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-evolution","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}