Researchers Built A Mini-Sun To Study Solar Wind

At the width of around 1.4 million kilometers, the Sun is a gigantic plasma ball at the solar system's center. We have studied it since ancient history and now we are even sending probes with the hope to touch it. And one of its most questioned aspects is the way its magnetic field impacts on the whole solar system.

Now, researchers from a university om the US have created a mini-sun of their own to study this process.

The creation, detailed in the journal Nature Physics, is millions of times as small as the real Sun. Named the Big Red Ball, it measures only three meters in width and looks like the human brain that’s being probed with steel and wires.

Helium gas got pumped into the Big Red Ball, as this gas is present in the real-life star, and turn it into plasma. A magnet at the Ball’s center generates a magnetic field and when the research team gives the machine an electric current, it mimics exactly how the Sun’s magnetic fields and plasma usually operate. According to the study’s lead author Ethan Peterson, a graduate student at the university, satellite missions have done a good job in documenting the origin of the fast wind. The scientists are nơ working to study the generation of the slow solar wind and its evolution while traveling toward the Earth.

They focused on the solar wind, which is particles streaming out from the red star into our solar system. Inside the Ball, the team managed to recreate the Parker Spiral, this is the magnetic field twisting out from the Sun through the entire solar system. The recreation is mentioned by Peterson as the spiral “large-scale map” as well as confirms how the plasma flows in the Sun created it.

Furthermore, the team identified plasma “burps,” the huge plasma ejections streaming out of the red hot star and sometimes fuel the solar wind. Within the Ball, there are probes monitoring the work, helping the team see the way they moved and the speed at which the plasma was spinning. Peterson said:

The experiments with the Big Red Ball is to complement the current missions for a better understanding of the Sun. Right now, the Parker Solar Probe of NSA is circling the Sun with the hope to answer more questions about its solar wind and atmosphere.