Commonalities between plasma behavior in lab experiments and astrophysical objects are what scientists plan to explore and exploit with the Center for Magnetic Self-Organization in Laboratory and Astrophysical Plasmas, while the nuclear reactions that power stellar processes are the focus of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA). NSF’s two newest Physics Frontier Centers (see Physics Today, Physics Today 0031-9228 5411200128 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1428432 November 2001, page 28 ) got started in the fall; each virtual center brings together experimenters, theorists, and computational scientists from several institutions.

The magnetic self-organization center has six interlinked themes: dynamo effects, magnetic reconnection, angular momentum transport, anomalous ion heating, magnetic chaos and transport, and magnetic helicity conservation. “It turns out that physicists working in plasmas and astrophysics puzzle over similar phenomena,” says Stewart Prager, an experimental plasma physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the center’s principal investigator.

Astrophysical conditions cannot be...

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