It took researchers more than 20 years to figure out this light show mystery.
The rather bluntly-named device is a tube as wide as a tree trunk and as long as a tenpin bowling lane, shrouded in magnetic field coils. By filling it with a gas and shooting an electron beam through it, scientists can quickly make a magnetized plasma. In fact, scientists can make it happen once every second., the plasma facility’s director. “That’s what it was built for.”
The technical challenges were daunting. First, not just any Alfvén wave would do. The researchers had to create an antenna that could launch Alfvén waves with enough amplitude to accelerate the electrons. To analyze their data, Howes and a graduate student turned to a technique used in spacecraft calculations, combining electric and magnetic measurements with measurements of the electrons to generate a distinct “signature.” From that, they could tell if electrons were actually riding the Alfvén waves.
“We’d done the experiment 65,000 times,” says Schroeder. “That sounds really impressive, but the way [the device] is set up, it’s designed for this high repetition. So the experiment runs once a second.” That’s 65,000 seconds in total—or about 18 hours.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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