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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

This is a pretty neat result. I wonder if it could be used to study plasma and/or fusion.

Also detonation. It Could make Rotation Detonation Engines possible.

Could you expand on that? I know just a little about detonation engines, and can’t fathom how this is related.

Flow instability is one of the biggest challenges to get them to operate for long time without blowing up. Of course, there are others.

Any progress on the control of chaotic flow is great news. Even at subsonic speed.

A very good point.

I was wondering the same. I know very little about either, but it reminds me of the containment issues that plasma fusion has, and I wondered if they could do something similar and make a controlled turbulence.

Isn’t it inertial? What would the equivalent be with plasma/fusion?

Shooting rings of plasma. Forming a ring of hot dense plasma moving quickly is an exercise for the reader.

It's alluring because turbulent modes are one of the leakier parts of magnetic confinement fusion devices. "Confining turbulence" is a thing that makes plasma physicists sit up in their chair.

> "Confining turbulence" is a thing that makes plasma physicists sit up in their chair.

Self-confined, doubly so.

We have that part covered; though unclear that we could get four systems into close enough proximity without negatively impacting each other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bDXXWQxK38

Still, if it allowed for more complete burning and/or less power input per axis…

But does this inertial phenomenon somehow translate to plasma? Is there some analog in the physics, or are these comments speculation?

Bulk plasmas behave as fluids as described by magnetohydronamic theory. If you observe a behavior in fluids there is a good chance that behavior will exist in plasmas if scaled correctly in size and time. Plasmas are, obviously, much more complicated. This warrants experimentation though because no one has ever tested something like this.

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