{"id":80721,"date":"2018-07-17T23:43:14","date_gmt":"2018-07-18T06:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/no-more-zigzags-scientists-uncover-mechanism-that-stabilizes-fusion-plasmas"},"modified":"2018-07-17T23:43:14","modified_gmt":"2018-07-18T06:43:14","slug":"no-more-zigzags-scientists-uncover-mechanism-that-stabilizes-fusion-plasmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/no-more-zigzags-scientists-uncover-mechanism-that-stabilizes-fusion-plasmas","title":{"rendered":"No more zigzags: Scientists uncover mechanism that stabilizes fusion plasmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/no-more-zigzags-scientists-uncover-mechanism-that-stabilizes-fusion-plasmas.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Sawtooth swings\u2014up-and-down ripples found in everything from stock prices on Wall Street to ocean waves\u2014occur periodically in the temperature and density of the plasma that fuels fusion reactions in doughnut-shaped facilities called tokamaks. These swings can sometimes combine with other instabilities in the plasma to produce a perfect storm that halts the reactions. However, some plasmas are free of sawtooth gyrations thanks to a mechanism that has long puzzled physicists.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have recently produced complex simulations of the process that may show the physics behind this <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/mechanism\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">mechanism<\/a>, which is called \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/magnetic+flux\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">magnetic flux<\/a> pumping.\u201d Unraveling the process could advance the development of fusion energy.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2018-07-zigzags-scientists-uncover-mechanism-stabilizes.html\">https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2018&#45;07-zigzags-scientists-uncover...lizes.html<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sawtooth swings\u2014up-and-down ripples found in everything from stock prices on Wall Street to ocean waves\u2014occur periodically in the temperature and density of the plasma that fuels fusion reactions in doughnut-shaped facilities called tokamaks. These swings can sometimes combine with other instabilities in the plasma to produce a perfect storm that halts the reactions. However, some [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[873,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nuclear-energy","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80721","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\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}