Containing A Star On Earth: Understanding Turbulence At 100 Million Degrees

One of the principal challenges remaining for realizing magnetic fusion energy is to understand and mitigate the chaotic flows of ionized gas, or plasma, that lead to unacceptable energy loss from the hot core of the device. These microscopic, randomly varying, or turbulent, fluctuations of plasma velocity and temperature arise owing to the strong differential in temperature from the hot core (>100,000,000 degrees) to the surrounding wall...