Plasma flows in laboratory used to understand how beam-like jets may form in space

Streaming jets of high-speed matter produce some of the stunning objects seen in space. Astronomers have seen them shooting out of young stars just being formed, X-ray binary stars and supermassive black holes at the centers of large galaxies. Theoretical explanations for what causes those beam-like jets have been around for years, but now an experiment using extremely high-powered lasers offers experimental verification of one proposed mechanism for creating them.

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