Fiery sighting: A new physics of eruptions that damage fusion experiments

Sudden bursts of heat that can damage the inner walls of tokamak fusion experiments are a hurdle that operators of the facilities must overcome. Such bursts, called 'edge localized modes (ELMs),' occur in doughnut-shaped tokamak devices that house the hot, charged plasma that is used to replicate on Earth the power that drives the sun and other stars. Now researchers have directly observed a possible and previously unknown process that can trigger damaging ELMs.

from Latest Science News -- ScienceDaily http://bit.ly/2AOUtFT