Facing the Threat of Space Storms, Scientists Create a Mini Sun with 1,000 Times Stronger Gravity

THE ANGELS – Physicists have created mini sun by simulating its own gravity to investigate the causes of weather or space storm the extreme. This tiny sun consists of superheated plasma inside a 3-centimeter-wide glass ball.

This tiny sun also generates sound waves that limit the rotating plasma just like the actual sun’s gravity. In the journal Physical Review Letters published on January 20, 2023, this mini sun helps scientists predict extreme solar storms that cause power outages, cripple the internet, and bring down satellites.

“We show that the microwave-generated sound system generates very strong gravity so that the problem of Earth’s gravity is not an obstacle in this study. We don’t even need to go into outer space to do these experiments anymore (on solar storms),” said Seth Putterman, a professor of physics at UCLA, quoted from the Live Science page, Wednesday (1/2/2023).

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The sun is a giant ball of plasma whose charged ions swirl above its surface to create a strong magnetic field. Because magnetic field lines can’t cross one another, they sometimes meander around before suddenly exploding.

Explosions on the surface of the sun launch bursts of radiation called solar flares or bursts of solar material called coronal mass ejections (CMEs). After launch, the CME travels at millions of miles per hour, forming giant compound waves that trigger geomagnetic storms.

Scientists do not know the exact details, when and how this storm occurred. To explain the process of solar storms, scientists create mini suns. They placed sulfur gas inside a glass ball before blasting it with microwaves.

This explosion turns into hot plasma with a temperature of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit or 2,760 degrees Celsius. The sound waves produced by the swirling ionized gas act as a surrogate for gravity.

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“By using sound generated by microwaves in a spherical hot plasma tube, we achieve a gravitational field that is 1,000 times stronger than Earth’s,” said John Koulakis, a physicist at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).