{"id":482046,"date":"2018-06-04T09:02:50","date_gmt":"2018-06-04T13:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?guid=71247b693edb8d71d2d217f77ab5e324"},"modified":"2018-06-04T09:02:50","modified_gmt":"2018-06-04T13:02:50","slug":"simulations-of-magnetically-confined-plasmas-reveal-a-self-regulating-stabilizing-mechanism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=482046","title":{"rendered":"Simulations of magnetically confined plasmas reveal a self-regulating stabilizing mechanism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The hot ionized gas called a plasma is confined in a bagel-shaped tokamak by a strong magnetic field, part of which is generated by a strong electric current flowing through the plasma. Periodically, a sawtooth instability occurs. It causes the central plasma temperature to abruptly drop and then recover in a sawtooth pattern. The instability limits how much current can be concentrated in the center of the plasma. However, there are types of tokamak plasmas for which a previously unknown mechanism, called magnetic flux pumping, limits the current in the plasma center so that it stays just below the sawtooth threshold. Scientists were puzzled by how this self-regulating mechanism works. The results of highly complex numerical simulations now suggest a possible answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The hot ionized gas called a plasma is confined in a bagel-shaped tokamak by a strong magnetic field, part of which is generated by a strong electric current flowing through the plasma. Periodically, a sawtooth instability occurs. It causes the central&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-482046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=482046"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":482047,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482046\/revisions\/482047"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=482046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=482046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=482046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}