
Space Place guest presentations are always free and open to the
public, and are offered the 2nd Tuesday of every month.
Guest Presentation
Tuesday, May 14• 7:00-8:00 pm
"How the Sun Got Its Spots: Solar Astrophysics in the Laboratory"
by David Weisberg, UW-Madison Plasma Physics
Even though the Sun is our closest and best observed star, there remains a good deal of unknown physics lurking beneath its surface. One outstanding question is: why does the sun have a magnetic field? We see evidence of a dynamic solar magnetic field in the cyclical appearance of sunspots and violent eruptions called mass coronal ejections, but the underlying reason for these remains a mystery.
At the Madison Plasma Dynamo Experiment, we are creating hot, spinning laboratory plasmas in an attempt to reproduce the basic mechanism of magnetic field generation theorized to occur in the Sun. |