St. Olaf College | Physics Department

"Astrophysics in the Laboratory"

Michael Brown

Physics Professor

Swarthmore College

Modern laboratory techniques have recently enabled scientists to reproduce astrophysically relevant conditions in the laboratory. Intense laser pulses can reproduce conditions relevant in supernovae and astrophysical jets. High voltage, high current pulses of electricity can heat ionized gas (called plasma) to conditions found on the surface and corona of the sun. Typically, these conditions can only be reproduced in the laboratory for a short time (nanoseconds to microseconds) while conditions in astrophysical contexts can persist for millions of years.

I'll discuss several questions posed by solar physics and astrophysics and describe how these questions are being addressed in the laboratory. The questions include: How do stars burn so hot for so long? How do the sun and planets generate magnetic fields? Why is the sun's atmosphere (corona) 1000 times hotter than its surface (photosphere)? How do astrophysical objects generate energetic particles (cosmic rays)? How do astrophysical disks also generate extended magnetized jets sometimes a million light years long? These questions are related and are being addressed at a facility at Swarthmore College called the Swarthmore Spheromak Experiment (or SSX).