{"id":97660,"date":"2019-10-21T06:02:53","date_gmt":"2019-10-21T13:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/gravity-crystals-a-new-method-for-exploring-the-physics-of-white-dwarf-stars"},"modified":"2019-10-21T06:02:53","modified_gmt":"2019-10-21T13:02:53","slug":"gravity-crystals-a-new-method-for-exploring-the-physics-of-white-dwarf-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/gravity-crystals-a-new-method-for-exploring-the-physics-of-white-dwarf-stars","title":{"rendered":"Gravity crystals: A new method for exploring the physics of white dwarf stars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/gravity-crystals-a-new-method-for-exploring-the-physics-of-white-dwarf-stars.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Grab a mixing bowl from your kitchen, throw in a handful of aluminum balls, apply some high voltage, and watch an elegant dance unfold where particles re-arrange themselves into a distinct \u201ccrystal\u201d pattern. This curious behavior belongs to the phenomenon known as Wigner crystallization, where particles with the same electrical charge repel one another to form an ordered structure.<\/p>\n<p>Wigner crystallization has been observed in variety of systems, ranging from particulates the size of sand grains suspended in small clouds of electrons and ions (called a dusty plasma) to the dense interiors of planet-sized <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/stars\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">stars<\/a>, known as white dwarfs. Professor Alex Bataller of North Carolina State University has recently discovered that Wigner crystallization inside <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/white+dwarfs\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">white dwarfs<\/a> can be studied in the lab using a new class of classical systems, called gravity crystals.<\/p>\n<p>For the curious behavior of Wigner crystallization to occur, there must be a system composed of charged particles that are both free to move about (plasma), that strongly interact with each other (strongly coupled particles), and has the presence of a confining force to keep the plasma particles from repulsively exploding away from each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Grab a mixing bowl from your kitchen, throw in a handful of aluminum balls, apply some high voltage, and watch an elegant dance unfold where particles re-arrange themselves into a distinct \u201ccrystal\u201d pattern. This curious behavior belongs to the phenomenon known as Wigner crystallization, where particles with the same electrical charge repel one another to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1506,48,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-particle-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97660","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=97660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97660\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}