Re: "Magnetorotational instability" seen in an experiment

From: Bruce Scott TOK (Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header_at_[127.1)
Date: 12/06/04 

Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 13:29:43 +0100 (MET)

Sam Wormley wrote:

|> Astrophysics in the lab (Dec 1)
|> http://physicsweb.org/article/world/17/12/6
|> Magnetized gases are ubiquitous in astrophysics, and the universe would
|> be a very different place without them. As they collapse under their own
|> gravity, huge clouds of cold gas form rotating "accretion" disks that
|> may ultimately form stars and planetary systems. Accretion disks are
|> also crucial in observations of black holes and binary systems. To
|> understand the behaviour of accretion disks, it is therefore vital to
|> study the properties of magnetic fields in rotating fluids.
|> "Magnetorotational instability" was only finally understood in 1991 but
|> the phenomenon has not been seen in an experiment until now.

You have to be a subscriber there now, unfortunately...

This appears to be an article by Balbus, however, one of the authors of
the Balbus and Hawley MRI paper in 1991, so he is blowing his own horn
quite a bit.

I thought the experiment might be the one by my former advisor at the
University of Maryland (AB Hassam, working with R Ellis on a rotational
plasma experiment), but it appears to be something else. 

-- 
cu,
Bruce
drift wave turbulence:  http://www.rzg.mpg.de/~bds/

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