Research funded by Dr Francisco Suzuki-Vidal Plasma Physics Group

Science and Engineering Open Day Physics Department, Imperial College London 26th June 2019 @FSuzukiVidal A typical night sky * (*) might not apply to the UK

2 The Carina Nebula Hubble Space Telescope

Francisco Suzuki-Vidal ( [email protected] ) 3 The Carina Nebula Hubble Space Telescope

Herbig-Haro object HH 901

(*) 500 km is roughly the distance from London to Paris… in 1 second

Francisco Suzuki-Vidal ( [email protected] ) 4 Planets Stars Supernovae

Cassini (NASA) Solar Dynamics Observatory Crab nebula (NASA)

Extreme Extreme Extreme pressure temperature speed

~1 million ~1 million ~1000 km/s atmospheres degrees (2 million mph)

(*) This is roughly the pressure of a blue whale trying to fit in a stiletto… Main ingredients for jets and shock waves note the pain in its face! Francisco Suzuki-Vidal ( [email protected] ) 5 With telescopes in space or on Earth

Jodie Foster in Contact (1997) (Warner Bros)

(NASA/ESA) Hubble Space Telescope Very Large Array radio telescope (~30 years) (40+ years!) LOADS of high quality data

BUT…

You take a single ‘snapshot’ of an object This isn’t what I do… (NOAO/AURA/NSF)

Francisco Suzuki-Vidal ( [email protected] ) 6 • 6.8 billion particles Run a massive computer simulation • Simulation ran for 6 weeks • 32 TB of RAM, 500 TB of data

LOADS of high quality data

BUT…

You need a super-computer This isn’t what I do… Francisco Suzuki-Vidal ( [email protected] ) 7 What if we could made a miniature version of the Sun, Saturn, a supernova, a stellar jet and shocks…

in the laboratory…?

Doc Emmett Brown in (1985) (Universal Pictures)

Nasser Al-Mutawa / Flickr

This is what I do!

Francisco Suzuki-Vidal ( [email protected] ) 8 Example: Kelvin-Helmholtz instability from shear between two fluids

(*) I recorded this Clouds Kevin-Helmholtz event in the Summer of 2017!

~ km

Saturn’s atmosphere

~10,000 km

(NASA/ESA)

Francisco Suzuki-Vidal ( [email protected] ) 9 Another example: Shock waves

~ cm ~ meters ~ 1014 meters

NASA / ESA

Arthur Anker / Flickr Christopher Pasatieri / Reuters The pistol shrimp uses its claw Sonic boom in Baby stars ‘vomit’ jets that drive to make a shock wave supersonic flight shock waves

Francisco Suzuki-Vidal ( [email protected] ) 10 @MagpieImperialCollege MAGPIE: Mega-Ampere Generator for Plasma Implosion Experiments 1 million Amperes in 1 millionth of a second (1 TeraWatt of electricity)

You jet is here

Transmission lines (‘cables’) Capacitors rd (‘batteries’) Happy 3 year physics undergrad Francisco Suzuki-Vidal ( [email protected] ) 11 MAGPIE is a world-class research facility in laboratory-astrophysics at Imperial Experiment

Computer simulation

Francisco Suzuki-Vidal ( [email protected] ) 12 30 mm

HH47 MAGPIE’s ultra high-speed camera: 30,000,000 fps

iPhone: HH34 60 fps

Slow Mo Guys: 300,000 fps MAGPIE

Francisco Suzuki-Vidal ( [email protected] ) 13 NIF: The National Ignition Facility (Livermore, California)

lasers.llnl.gov lasers.llnl.gov

(*) This laser is roughly the size of 3 football pitches

(*) This is a vacuum chamber larger than a typical London flat

lasers.llnl.gov Francisco Suzuki-Vidal ( [email protected] ) 14 E-ELT (European Extremely Large Telescope) Space IS the final frontier: New telescopes, experiments and IDEAS

ESO NASA/JPL

James Webb Space Telescope

ESA (C. Carreau)

Francisco Suzuki-Vidal ( [email protected] ) 15