Metals 2015, 5, 289-335; doi:10.3390/met5010289 OPEN ACCESS metals ISSN 2075-4701 www.mdpi.com/journal/metals Article Canonical Models of Geophysical and Astrophysical Flows: Turbulent Convection Experiments in Liquid Metals Adolfo Ribeiro 1;*, Guillaume Fabre 1;2, Jean-Luc Guermond 3 and Jonathan M. Aurnou 1 1 Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA; E-Mail:
[email protected] 2 Laboratoire de Physique, École Normale Supérieure, Lyon 69007, France; E-Mail:
[email protected] 3 Department of Mathematics, Texas A & M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA; E-Mail:
[email protected] * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail:
[email protected]; Tel.: +1-310-467-6102. Academic Editor: Enrique Louis Received: 25 July 2014 / Accepted: 9 February 2015 / Published: 9 March 2015 Abstract: Planets and stars are often capable of generating their own magnetic fields. This occurs through dynamo processes occurring via turbulent convective stirring of their respective molten metal-rich cores and plasma-based convection zones. Present-day numerical models of planetary and stellar dynamo action are not carried out using fluids properties that mimic the essential properties of liquid metals and plasmas (e.g., using fluids with thermal Prandtl numbers P r < 1 and magnetic Prandtl numbers P m 1). Metal dynamo simulations should become possible, though, within the next decade. In order then to understand the turbulent convection phenomena occurring in geophysical or astrophysical fluids and next-generation numerical models thereof, we present here canonical, end-member examples of thermally-driven convection in liquid gallium, first with no magnetic field or rotation present, then with the inclusion of a background magnetic field and then in a rotating system (without an imposed magnetic field).