For Immediate Release: December 18, 2003
Contact: Tom Krattenmaker
610-328-8534
tkratte1@swarthmore.edu
http://www.swarthmore.edu/news/
Swarthmore College is the only liberal arts college to join a new center for the study of magnetic self-organization in plasmas (hot, ionized gases). The other academic institutions included are the University of Chicago, Princeton University, and the University of Wisconsin.
"It's an honor for Swarthmore to be associated with such excellent research institutions," says Associate Professor of Physics Michael Brown, an authority on experimental plasma physics who helped form the center. "It really demonstrates the high level of work our students are capable of doing."
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On the left, a composite image of data from SSX, about a foot tall. At right, a photo of an actual solar flare, about 50,000 km tall. Their similarity in structure demonstrates Brown's ability to recreate in his lab conditions similar to those that exist on the sun. |
The Center for Magnetic Self-Organization in Laboratory and Astrophysical Plasmas is funded over five years with $11.25 million from the National Science Foundation. Its goal is to provide opportunities for collaboration among experimental physicists, astrophysicists, and computer modelers to further the understanding of plasma both in the lab and the cosmos.
"We're trying to understand the formation of large-scale objects in the universe," Brown says. "We make miniature versions of these structures in our lab, then members of the center will use computer simulations to model our experiments and the astrophysical objects to try to gain some common understanding. Another benefit is that computer simulation is a kind of 'priesthood' that our undergraduates normally don't have access to - and with this center they will."
Swarthmore will receive about $250,000 to facilitate collaborations involving the Swarthmore Spheromak Experiment (SSX), a laboratory astrophysics experiment in which phenomena such as ion acceleration are studied. Brown conceptualized, designed, and built the device, which allows him and his students to use 1 billion watts of power to recreate solar flares in miniature and study what happens when they collide. The work has implications for nuclear fusion, the process that fuels the sun and stars. Since 1995, SSX has received almost $1.7 million in funding.
Brown's research focuses on solar physics, astrophysical plasma physics, and nuclear fusion energy. He joined the Swarthmore faculty in 1994 after being a senior research fellow at the California Institute of Technology and teaching at Occidental College. Brown, a past member of the executive committee of the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics, is a winner of the Department of Energy Junior Investigator Award.
For more images, visit Brown's site, Self Organization in Space and Lab Plasmas.
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