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Electric Field - Complete Toolkit

To understand that all sources of charge create an influence or action upon other objects some distance away and that the electric field concept is used to describe that influence.
To state the mathematical definition of electric field (force/charge) and to describe the dependence of the electric field strength upon the variables that affect it.
To use an understanding of the convention for electric field direction to identify the electric field direction around a source charge.
To construct and to interpret electric field line diagrams for isolated charges and for collections of two or more charges.
To use the electric field equation, Coulomb’s law equation, and Newton’s laws to analyze physical situations that involve electric fields and to solve physics word problems associated with such situations.

Readings from The Physics Classroom Tutorial

The Physics Classroom Tutorial, Static Electricity Chapter, Lesson 4

Interactive Simulations

Video and Animations

Physics Education Research

Labs and Investigations

The Physics Classroom, The Laboratory, Electric Field Simulation Students use an Open Source Physics electric field simulation to explore the effect of distance, test charge amount, and source charge amount upon the strength of the electric field.
The Physics Classroom, The Laboratory, Coulomb’s Hair Lab Charged balloons are hung by light strings from a common support. Students make measurements (mass, separation distance, string length, etc.) in order to determine the number of electrons transferred to two balloons when rubbed against animal fur.
The Physics Classroom, The Laboratory, Electric Field Lines Students use an electric field line simulator to explore the pattern of field lines (direction, general shape, density, etc.) around single point charges and a collection of point charges. Link: http://www.physicsclassroom.com/lab#estatic

Demonstration Ideas

Minds On Physics Internet Modules:

Static Electricity, Ass’t SE10 - Electric Field
Static Electricity, Ass’t SE11 - Electric Field Equation
Static Electricity, Ass’t SE12 – Electric Field Lines

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The Curriculum Corner, Static Electricity, Electric Field
The Curriculum Corner, Static Electricity, Electric Field Lines

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The Calculator Pad, Static Electricity, Problems #16 - #21, #26 - #32 Link: The Calculator Pad

Science Reasoning Activities:

Science Reasoning Center, Electrostatics, Charge Interactions
Science Reasoning Center, Electrostatics, Sticky Tape Experiments Link: The Science Reasoning Center

Common Misconception:

Field Strength is NOT Force Strength It is important that students distinguish between electric force and electric field strength. They are not the same. They have different (albeit related) definitions, are expressed in different units, and involve a different set of measurements in order to determine them. The electric force describes the amount of push or pull exerted on an object by another charged object. The electric field strength describes the amount of force per unit of charge experienced by a test charge if placed at any given location about a source charge. Electric force has the standard unit of Newton (N) an electric field has the standard unit of Newton/Coulomb (N/C). (See Related Physics Education Research on Page 1 for more insight into this persistent misconception.)
Convention for Direction The direction of the electric field around a source charge is not always the same as the direction of the force upon a test charge. By convention, the electric field direction is the direction that a positive test charge would be pushed or pulled if placed in a given space. As such, the direction of force on a negative charge would be in a direction that is opposite of the electric field direction.
Electric Field Lines Show the Direction of Force It is a common student misconception that the field lines surrounding a charged object show which direction a test charge would move if located on that line. They don’t. The field lines are lines of force, not lines of movement. Being lines of force, they only show the direction of force upon a charge object when momentarily located upon the line. As such, a test charge will not necessarily follow a motion directed along the line. For instance, if a moving charge approaches a line with a velocity that is directed at some angle to the line, the force will cause the test charge to deviate from its original path. However, it will not cause the test charge to continue in motion along the line.

Elsewhere on the Web:

HS-PS2.B.1 : Coulomb’s Law provides the mathematical model to describe and predict the effects of electrostatic forces between distant objects.
HS-PS2.B.2: Forces at a distance are explained by fields (gravitational, electric, and magnetic) permeating space that can transfer energy through space.
HS-PS2.B.3: Attraction and repulsion between electric charges at the atomic scale explain the structure, properties, and transformations of matter, as well as the contact forces between material objects.
Different patterns may be observed at each of the scales at which a system is studied and can provide evidence for causality in explanation of phenomena.
Cause and effect relationships can be suggested and predicted for complex natural and human-designed systems by examining what is known about smaller scale mechanisms within the system.
Complex and microscopic structures and systems can be visualized, modeled, and used to describe how their function depends on the shapes, composition, and relationships among its parts, therefore complex natural structures/systems can be analyzed to determine how they function.
Develop and/or use a model to generate data to support explanations, analyze systems, or solve problems.
Use a model to provide mechanistic accounts of phenomena.
Evaluate merits and limitations of two different models of the same process or mechanism.
Use mathematical representations of phenomena to describe explanations.
Create or revise a simulation of a phenomenon, designed device, process, or system.
Construct an explanation that includes qualitative or quantitative relationships between variables that predict phenomena.
Construct and review an explanation based on valid and reliable evidence obtained from a variety of sources (including students’ own investigations, models, simulations, and peer review) and the assumption that theories and laws that describe the natural world operate today as they did in the past and will continue to do so in the future
Critically read scientific literature adapted for classroom use to determine the central ideas or conclusions and/or to obtain scientific and/or technical information to summarize complex evidence, concepts, processes, or information presented in a text.

Remember Me

Shop Experiment Electric Field Due to a Line of Charge Experiments

Electric field due to a line of charge.

Experiment #27 from Physics with Video Analysis

Introduction

Consider a thin insulated rod that carries a known negative charge Q rod that is uniformly distributed. It is possible to determine the electric field along a line perpendicular to the rod that passes through its center using the following equation – often derived in introductory texts:

$\vec E_{{\text{rod}}}^{{\text{theory}}} = \frac{{\left( {k{Q_{{\text{rod}}}}} \right)}} {{r\sqrt {{r^2} + {{(L/2)}^2}} }}\hat i$

where L is the length of the charged part of the rod, r is the distance from the test charge to the center of the charged part of the rod, and Q rod is its total charge. The constant k is the well-known Coulomb constant.

In this activity, you will

$\vec E_{{\text{rod}}}^{{\text{meas}}}$

Sensors and Equipment

This experiment features the following sensors and equipment. Additional equipment may be required.

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This experiment is #27 of Physics with Video Analysis . The experiment in the book includes student instructions as well as instructor information for set up, helpful hints, and sample graphs and data.

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Electric field mapping.

This qualitative activity introduces the concepts of equipotential surfaces and electric fields. A number of rules about the electric field are verified. At the end of the activity, the student should be able to sketch the electric field around a simple charge distribution.

Grade Level: College

Subject: Physics

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Voltage Sensor (unshrouded)

Unshrouded Voltage Sensor designed for use with PASCO’s 550 or 850 Interface’s analog channel.

Field Mapper Kit

Allows students to map both the potentials and the electric fields around any two-dimensional charged conductors.

Many lab activities can be conducted with our Wireless , PASPORT , or even ScienceWorkshop sensors and equipment. For assistance with substituting compatible instruments, contact PASCO Technical Support . We're here to help. Copyright © 2018 PASCO

Source Collection: Lab #73

Comprehensive 850 Physics System

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Dislocation Motion in an Electric Field

THEORETICAL AND MATHEMATICAL PHYSICS
Published: 06 February 2019
Volume 73 , pages 573–578, ( 2018 )

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N. Ed. Smirnov 1

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An expression for the effective polarization electric charge per unit length of dislocation is obtained. It is shown that the polarization electric charge arises due to the interaction of an electric field only with the edge components of dislocations. An expression is obtained for the force that acts on a dislocation in the electric field and it is shown that the determining role in experiments would be played by the projection of this force onto the dislocation slip plane.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author is grateful to his colleagues of the Department of Theoretical Physics and to the participants of the workshop of the Department of Molecular Processes and Extreme Matter States of Moscow State University for discussions of the problems considered in this paper.

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N. Ed. Smirnov

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Smirnov, N.E. Dislocation Motion in an Electric Field. Moscow Univ. Phys. 73 , 573–578 (2018). https://doi.org/10.3103/S0027134918060231

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Received : 18 June 2018

Accepted : 28 June 2018

Published : 06 February 2019

Issue Date : November 2018

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3103/S0027134918060231

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Scientists Detect Invisible Electric Field Around Earth For First Time

An invisible, weak energy field wrapped around our planet Earth has finally been detected and measured.

It's called the ambipolar field, an electric field first hypothesized more than 60 years ago, and its discovery will change the way we study and understand the behavior and evolution of our beautiful, ever-changing world.

"Any planet with an atmosphere should have an ambipolar field," says astronomer Glyn Collinson of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

"Now that we've finally measured it, we can begin learning how it's shaped our planet as well as others over time."

Earth isn't just a blob of dirt sitting inert in space. It's surrounded by all sorts of fields. There's the gravity field. We don't know a lot about gravity , especially considering how ubiquitous it is, but without gravity we wouldn't have a planet. Gravity also helps keep the atmosphere snug against the surface.

There's also the magnetic field , which is generated by the rotating, conducting material in Earth's interior, converting kinetic energy into the magnetic field that spins out into space. This protects our planet from the effects of the solar wind and radiation, and also helps to keep the atmosphere from blowing away.

In 1968, scientists described a phenomenon that we couldn't have noticed until the space age. Spacecraft flying over Earth's poles detected a supersonic wind of particles escaping from Earth's atmosphere. The best explanation for this was a third, electric energy field.

"It's called the ambipolar field and it's an agent of chaos. It counters gravity, and it strips particles off into space," Collinson explains in a video .

"But we've never been able to measure this before because we haven't had the technology. So, we built the Endurance rocket ship to go looking for this great invisible force."

Here's how the ambipolar field was expected to work. Starting at an altitude of around 250 kilometers (155 miles), in a layer of the atmosphere called the ionosphere , extreme ultraviolet and solar radiation ionizes atmospheric atoms, breaking off negatively charged electrons and turning the atom into a positively charged ion.

The lighter electrons will try to fly off into space, while the heavier ions will try to sink towards the ground. But the plasma environment will try to maintain charge neutrality, which results in the emergence of an electric field between the electrons and the ions to tether them together.

This is called the ambipolar field because it works in both directions, with the ions supplying a downward pull and the electrons an upward one.

The result is that the atmosphere is puffed up; the increased altitude allows some ions to escape into space, which is what we see in the polar wind.

This ambipolar field would be incredibly weak, which is why Collinson and his team designed instrumentation to detect it. The Endurance mission, carrying this experiment, was launched in May 2022, reaching an altitude of 768.03 kilometers (477.23 miles) before falling back to Earth with its precious, hard-won data.

And it succeeded. It measured a change in electric potential of just 0.55 volts – but that was all that was needed.

"A half a volt is almost nothing – it's only about as strong as a watch battery," Collinson says . "But that's just the right amount to explain the polar wind."

That amount of charge is enough to tug on hydrogen ions with 10.6 times the strength of gravity, launching them into space at the supersonic speeds measured over Earth's poles.

Oxygen ions, which are heavier than hydrogen ions, are also lofted higher, increasing the density of the ionosphere at high altitudes by 271 percent, compared to what its density would be without the ambipolar field.

What's even more exciting is that this is just the first step. We don't know the broader implications of the ambipolar field, how long it has been there, what it does, and how it has helped shape the evolution of our planet and its atmosphere, and possibly even the life on its surface .

"This field is a fundamental part of the way Earth works," Collinson says . "And now we've finally measured it, we can actually start to ask some of these bigger and exciting questions."

The research has been published in Nature .

NASA Discovers a Long-Sought Global Electric Field on Earth

A snow-covered view of the polar cap from space. The curvature of the Earth is visible along the horizon against a dark background.

A rocket team reports the first successful detection of Earth’s ambipolar electric field: a weak, planet-wide electric field as fundamental as Earth’s gravity and magnetic fields.
First hypothesized more than 60 years ago, the ambipolar electric field is a key driver of the “polar wind,” a steady outflow of charged particles into space that occurs above Earth’s poles.
This electric field lifts charged particles in our upper atmosphere to greater heights than they would otherwise reach and may have shaped our planet’s evolution in ways yet to be explored.

Using observations from a NASA suborbital rocket, an international team of scientists has, for the first time, successfully measured a planet-wide electric field thought to be as fundamental to Earth as its gravity and magnetic fields. Known as the ambipolar electric field, scientists first hypothesized over 60 years ago that it drove how our planet’s atmosphere can escape above Earth’s North and South Poles. Measurements from the rocket, NASA’s Endurance mission , have confirmed the existence of the ambipolar field and quantified its strength, revealing its role in driving atmospheric escape and shaping our ionosphere — a layer of the upper atmosphere — more broadly.

Understanding the complex movements and evolution of our planet’s atmosphere provides clues not only to the history of Earth but also gives us insight into the mysteries of other planets and determining which ones might be hospitable to life. The paper was published Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024, in the journal Nature .

An Electric Field Drawing Particles Out to Space

Since the late 1960s, spacecraft flying over Earth’s poles have detected a stream of particles flowing from our atmosphere into space. Theorists predicted this outflow, which they dubbed the “polar wind,” spurring research to understand its causes.

Some amount of outflow from our atmosphere was expected. Intense, unfiltered sunlight should cause some particles from our air to escape into space, like steam evaporating from a pot of water. But the observed polar wind was more mysterious. Many particles within it were cold, with no signs they had been heated — yet they were traveling at supersonic speeds.

“Something had to be drawing these particles out of the atmosphere,” said Glyn Collinson, principal investigator of Endurance at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the paper. Scientists suspected a yet-to-be-discovered electric field could be at work.

The hypothesized electric field, generated at the subatomic scale, was expected to be incredibly weak, with its effects felt only over hundreds of miles. For decades, detecting it was beyond the limits of existing technology. In 2016, Collinson and his team got to work inventing a new instrument they thought was up to the task of measuring Earth’s ambipolar field.

How the Ambipolar Field Works

A weak electric field in the upper atmosphere may loft charged particles into space..

Scientists theorized this electric field should begin at around 150 miles (250 kilometers) altitude, where atoms in our atmosphere break apart into negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions. Electrons are incredibly light — the slightest kick of energy could send them shooting out to space. Ions are at least 1,836 times heavier and tend to sink toward the ground. If gravity alone were in play, the two populations, once separated, would drift apart over time. But given their opposite electric charges, an electric field forms to tether them together, preventing any separation of charges and counteracting some of the effects of gravity.

This electric field is bidirectional, or “ambipolar,” because it works in both directions. Ions pull the electrons down with them as they sink with gravity. At the same time, electrons lift ions to greater heights as they attempt to escape to space, like a tiny dog tugging on its sluggish owner’s leash. The net effect of the ambipolar field is to extend the height of the atmosphere, lifting some ions high enough to escape with the polar wind. Animation credits: NASA/Conceptual Image Lab/Wes Buchanan/Krystofer Kim

Launching a Rocket from the Arctic

The team’s instruments and ideas were best suited for a suborbital rocket flight launched from the Arctic. In a nod to the ship that carried Ernest Shackleton on his famous 1914 voyage to Antarctica, the team named their mission Endurance. The scientists set a course for Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago just a few hundred miles from the North Pole and home to the northernmost rocket range in the world.

“Svalbard is the only rocket range in the world where you can fly through the polar wind and make the measurements we needed,” said Suzie Imber, a space physicist at the University of Leicester, UK, and co-author of the paper.

On May 11, 2022, Endurance launched and reached an altitude of 477.23 miles (768.03 kilometers), splashing down 19 minutes later in the Greenland Sea. Across the 322-mile altitude range where it collected data, Endurance measured a change in electric potential of only 0.55 volts.

“A half a volt is almost nothing — it’s only about as strong as a watch battery,” Collinson said. “But that’s just the right amount to explain the polar wind.”

A rocket launches into the blue sky from a snow-covered launch range, leaving a bright cloud of rocket exhaust in its wake.

Hydrogen ions, the most abundant type of particle in the polar wind, experience an outward force from this field 10.6 times stronger than gravity. “That’s more than enough to counter gravity — in fact, it’s enough to launch them upwards into space at supersonic speeds,” said Alex Glocer, Endurance project scientist at NASA Goddard and co-author of the paper.

Heavier particles also get a boost. Oxygen ions at that same altitude, immersed in this half-a-volt field, weigh half as much. In general, the team found that the ambipolar field increases what’s known as the “scale height” of the ionosphere by 271%, meaning the ionosphere remains denser to greater heights than it would be without it.

“It’s like this conveyor belt, lifting the atmosphere up into space,” Collinson added.

Endurance’s discovery has opened many new paths for exploration. The ambipolar field, as a fundamental energy field of our planet alongside gravity and magnetism, may have continuously shaped the evolution of our atmosphere in ways we can now begin to explore. Because it’s created by the internal dynamics of an atmosphere, similar electric fields are expected to exist on other planets, including Venus and Mars.

“Any planet with an atmosphere should have an ambipolar field,” Collinson said. “Now that we’ve finally measured it, we can begin learning how it’s shaped our planet as well as others over time.”

By Miles Hatfield and Rachel Lense NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Media Contact: Sarah Frazier, [email protected]

Endurance was a NASA-funded mission conducted through the Sounding Rocket Program at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The Svalbard Rocket Range is owned and operated by Andøya Space. The European Incoherent Scatter Scientific Association (EISCAT) Svalbard radar, located in Longyearbyen, made ground-based measurements of the ionosphere critical to interpreting the rocket data. The United Kingdom Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Research Council of Norway (RCN) funded the EISCAT radar for the Endurance mission. EISCAT is owned and operated by research institutes and research councils of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Japan, China, and the United Kingdom (the EISCAT Associates). The Endurance mission team encompasses affiliates of the Catholic University of America, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Leicester, U.K., the University of New Hampshire, and Penn State University.

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Satellites Discovered Something Bizarre in the 1960s — We Finally Know What It Is

It's called the "ambipolar electric field," and it explains one of the weirdest things our planet's atmosphere does.

Illustration of ions in Earth's upper atmosphere streaming outward from the North Pole

Earth has a global magnetic field that’s flinging tiny bits of our atmosphere out into space.

Researcher’s from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center recently launched a rocket high into the sky over the Arctic to measure the electrical charge of Earth’s atmosphere. The mission, called Endurance, found a tiny but significant difference in the electric potential (think of potential as the electric version of air pressure) between the air 150 miles up and the air about 477 miles up. The difference is enough to explain something bizarre that satellites first noticed in the 1960s: Streams of electrically-charged particles seemed to flow out into space from Earth’s poles.

NASA atmospheric scientist Glyn Collinson and his colleagues published their work in the journal Nature .

The ambipolar electric field boosts hydrogen ions out into space, fueling a strange phenomenon called the polar wind.

How Earth’s Global Electric Field Works

Just as water in a pipe tends to flow from areas with high pressure to areas of low pressure, differences in electrical potential can push and pull electrically charged particles, like hydrogen ions. The difference, across roughly 300 miles of altitude, is only about half a volt, but that’s enough to levitate positively-charged hydrogen and oxygen ions upward with more than enough force to overcome gravity and launch hydrogen ions into space.

“A half a volt is almost nothing — it’s only about as strong as a watch battery,” says Collinson in a recent statement from NASA . “But that’s just the right amount to explain the polar wind.”

Collinson and his colleagues call the weak, yet mighty, electrical field they’ve discovered the “ambipolar electric field,” because it works in two directions at once: It pulls negatively charged electrons downward and lifts positively-charged ions upward. The ambipolar electric field is as important to how our atmosphere works as gravity and our planet’s magnetic field, even though it creates polar wind across just a few hundred miles around each pole.

When sunlight hits the upper layers of the atmosphere, its energy is enough to knock the electrons off the lazily drifting atoms. That leaves positively-charged ions and negatively-charged electrons floating around up there, and an electric field forms between them.

To understand the effect this subtle electric field has on our planet’s upper atmosphere, picture what happens when you rub an inflated balloon across a cat’s fur. The cat’s fur puffs upward and outward, lifted by the force of negatively-charged electrons repelling each other. Under the influence of the ambipolar field, Earth’s upper atmosphere puffs up, too; ions float higher than they otherwise would. And some of them escape.

“It’s like this conveyor belt, lifting the atmosphere up into space,” says Collinson.

But we’re not in danger of losing all our air, or even most of it the way Mars did in its ancient past. Even with the polar wind blowing at full strength, Earth is losing hydrogen just a little at a time. Meanwhile, things happening on our planet’s surface and deep underground keep pouring new gases into the atmosphere: volcanoes and photosynthesis do most of that work.

This video from NASA explains more about how the ambipolar electric field works.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Scientists have been looking for the ambipolar electric field since the 1960s, when satellites first spotted the polar wind. Now that Collinson and his colleagues have found it, they say it’s time to figure out what role it’s played in the history of our planet. Earth’s atmosphere has changed dramatically several times throughout our planet’s history, and all of those changes would have affected — and been affected by — the polar wind. We’re just not yet sure exactly how.

Understanding Earth’s ambipolar electric field better may also help us fully explain what happened to the atmosphere on Mars, how the atmosphere on Venus became the thick, acidic mess that it is today, and where to look for breathable atmospheres on distant worlds.

“Any planet with an atmosphere should have an ambipolar field,” says Collinson. “Now that we’ve finally measured it, we can begin learning how it’s shaped our planet as well as others over time.

Space Science

US nuclear experiment mimics massive plasma jets ejected by black holes

The sloshing plasma expanded to create structures resembling columns and mushrooms. .

Abhishek Bhardwaj

US nuclear experiment mimics massive plasma jets ejected by black holes

An artist’s representation of plasma interacting with magnetic fields.

Researchers have devised a new technique capable of capturing details of plasma changing shape and sloshing in space within tokamaks.

The new measurement technique uses protons, and researchers believe it has also shed light on the formation of huge plasma jets that stretch between stars in the universe.

Inside the doughnut-shaped fusion device – also called a tokamak – the plasma encounters strong magnetic fields.

The United States Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has succeeded in creating detailed images of the magnetic field bending outward because of the pressure created by expanding plasma.

Sloshing, plasma jets, and black holes

According to the PPPL researchers, the sloshing plasma expanded to create structures resembling columns and mushrooms. Further, as the plasma’s energy diminished, the magnetic field lines snapped back into their original positions.

“As a result, the plasma was compressed into a straight structure resembling the jets of plasma that can stream from ultra-dense dead stars known as black holes and extend for distances many times the size of a galaxy,” the press release by PPPL says.

The researchers further state those jets that which stretch between stars, whose causes remain a mystery, could be formed by the same compressing magnetic fields observed in this research.

“When we did the experiment and analyzed the data, we discovered we had something big,” said Sophia Malko, a PPPL staff research physicist and lead scientist on the paper.

“Observing magneto-Rayleigh Taylor instabilities arising from the interaction of plasma and magnetic fields had long been thought to occur but had never been directly observed until now. This observation helps confirm that this instability occurs when expanding plasma meets magnetic fields. We didn’t know that our diagnostics would have that kind of precision.”

Will Fox, another PPPL researcher and principal investigator of the research, stated that this experiment proves the importance of magnetic fields for the formation of plasma jets.

“Now that we might have insight into what generates these jets, we could, in theory, study giant astrophysical jets and learn something about black holes.”

The technique behind the detailed findings

For the experiment , the team improved a measurement technique known as proton radiography by creating a new variation for this experiment that would allow for extremely precise measurements.

The researchers heated a small disk of plastic with the help of lasers to make the plasma. To produce protons, they shone 20 lasers at a capsule containing fuel made of varieties of hydrogen and helium atoms.

As the fuel heated up, fusion reactions occurred and produced a burst of both protons and intense light known as X-rays.

The team also installed a sheet of mesh with tiny holes near the capsule. As the protons flowed through the mesh, the outpouring was separated into small, separate beams that were bent because of the surrounding magnetic fields.

By comparing the distorted mesh image to an undistorted image produced by X-rays, the team could understand how the magnetic fields were pushed around by the expanding plasma, leading to whirl-like instabilities at the edges.

“What we observed was like when you pour milk into coffee,” Malko said. “During the interaction , lots of structures form where the fields meet the plasma because there are drastic differences in temperature, density and the strength of the magnetic field. It’s a perfect place for them to grow.”

“Our experiment was unique because we could directly see the magnetic field changing over time,” Fox said. “We could directly observe how the field gets pushed out and responds to the plasma in a type of tug of war.”

The researchers now plan to work on future experiments that will help improve models of expanding plasma.

“Now that we have measured these instabilities very accurately, we have the information we need to improve our models and potentially simulate and understand astrophysical jets to a higher degree than before,” Malko stated. “It’s interesting that humans can make something in a laboratory that usually exists in space.”

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Home / World / Indigenous women battle to find 1950s CIA-funded human experiments site in Montreal

Indigenous women battle to find 1950s CIA-funded human experiments site in Montreal

Activists Seek to Halt Construction at Montreal Site Believed to Hold Dark Secrets

A determined group of Indigenous women is fighting to halt construction at a former Montreal hospital site, which they believe may hold the key to uncovering the fate of children lost to a gruesome CIA experiment from over half a century ago.

For the past two years, these women have been striving to delay a construction project spearheaded by McGill University and the Quebec government.

“They took our children and had all kinds of things done to them. They were experimenting on them,” said Kahentinetha, an 85-year-old activist from the Mohawk community of Kahnawake, located southwest of Montreal. Kahentinetha, who uses only one name, has been a vocal advocate for this cause.

Hidden truths in unmarked graves

The activists are relying on archival records and testimonies that suggest the site contains unmarked graves of children who were once interned at the Royal Victoria Hospital and the adjacent Allan Memorial Institute, a psychiatric facility. The latter was the setting for MK Ultra, a notorious human experiments program funded by the US Central Intelligence Agency during the 1950s and 1960s.

MK Ultra: A sinister chapter of the cold war

Amidst the Cold War, the MK Ultra program sought to develop methods and drugs for brainwashing individuals. Experiments were conducted across Britain, Canada, and the United States, subjecting people — including Indigenous children in Montreal — to electroshocks, hallucinogenic drugs, and sensory deprivation.

“They wanted to erase us,” Kahentinetha remarked, emphasizing the grave impact of these experiments.

A leading figure in the Indigenous rights movement, Kahentinetha has traveled extensively to denounce colonialism. She describes this battle as “the most important of (her) life.”

“We want to know why they did this and who’s going to take the blame for it,” she said, underscoring the need for accountability.

Legal battles and investigations

In the fall of 2022, the group of mothers secured an injunction to pause work on a new university campus and research center at the site, a project valued at CAD 870 million (USD 643 million). Fellow activist Kwetiio, 52, who also uses only one name, noted that they chose to represent themselves without lawyers, stating, “because in our ways, no one speaks for us.”

Over the summer, sniffer dogs and specialized probes were deployed to search the property’s expansive, dilapidated buildings. These efforts identified three areas of interest for further excavation. However, according to McGill University and the Societe Quebecoise des Infrastructure (SQI), “no human remains have been discovered.”

Accusations of mismanagement

The Mohawk mothers accuse the university and the government infrastructure agency of violating an agreement by selecting the archaeologists who conducted the search and prematurely ending their work.

“They gave themselves the power to lead the investigation of crimes that were potentially committed by their own employees in the past,” stated Philippe Blouin, an anthropologist assisting the mothers.

Despite their appeal being dismissed earlier this month, the women have vowed to persist in their quest for truth and justice.

A nation reckoning with its past

“People should know history, so that it does not repeat itself,” said Kwetiio, stressing the importance of awareness.

In recent years, Canada has begun confronting the atrocities of its past. Generations of Indigenous children were sent to residential schools where they were stripped of their language, culture, and identities. A 2015 truth and reconciliation report deemed these actions as “cultural genocide.”

Between 1831 and 1996, approximately 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their homes and placed in 139 such schools, with several thousand never returning to their communities. The discovery of unmarked graves of 215 children at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia in May 2021 ignited a national reflection on this dark chapter of Canadian history and prompted searches for more graves across the country.

Seeking truth and harmony

“It was not only residential schools, it involved hospitals, sanatoriums, churches and orphanages too,” said Kwetiio. For her, illuminating the past is essential for change and restoring the harmony that existed before colonialism.

As these Indigenous women continue their fight, the world watches closely, recognizing the importance of their struggle for truth, justice, and reconciliation.

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