Magnetic Bottles
A magnetic bottle is the superposition of two magnetic mirrors. For example, two parallel coils separated by a small distance, carrying the same current in the same direction will produce a magnetic bottle between them. Particles near either end of the bottle experience a magnetic force towards the center of the region; particles with appropriate speeds spiral repeatedly from one end of the region to the other and back. Magnetic bottles can be used to temporarily trap charged particles. This technique is used to confine very hot plasmas with temperatures of the order of 106 K. In a similar way, the Earth's non-uniform magnetic field traps charged particles coming from the sun in doughnut shaped regions around the earth called the "Van Allen radiation belts", which were discovered in 1958 using data obtained by instruments aboard the Explorer 1 satellite.
Read more about this topic: Magnetic Mirror
Famous quotes containing the words magnetic and/or bottles:
“We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For some, bottles of liquor gleam like the towers of Eldorado.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)