Aside From Just Slathering Sandwiches, Mayo Can Actually Help Physicists Produce Nuclear Fusion, According To A New Study

Yulia Furman - stock.adobe.com - illustrative purposes only
Yulia Furman - stock.adobe.com - illustrative purposes only

Mayonnaise isn’t just good for spreading onto your sandwiches. It can also be used to help physicists produce nuclear fusion, a reaction that powers stars like the sun. In a new study, scientists scooped the condiment into a machine with a churning wheel to test what conditions made it flow.

“We use mayonnaise because it behaves like a solid, but when subjected to a pressure gradient, it starts to flow,” Arindam Banerjee, the lead author of the study and a mechanical engineer at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, said.

Undergoing such a process could help clarify the physics that occurs at high temperatures and pressures in nuclear fusion reactions without having to create those extreme conditions. So, what is nuclear fusion, anyway?

Nuclear fusion is a reaction that takes place when two or more light nuclei fuse to produce a heavier nucleus. As a result, a huge amount of power is generated. In theory, it could be the source of cleaner, greener energy on Earth that is nearly limitless — but only if the reaction can produce more energy than it requires to run.

According to NASA, nuclear fusion occurs at 27 million degrees Fahrenheit when the massive gravity of a star forces hydrogen atoms together. On Earth, that kind of crushing pressure does not exist, so fusion reactors must be manufactured and run at a rate that is 10 times hotter than the sun.

There are a couple of different ways to achieve nuclear fusion in a laboratory setting. One of the methods is to use a device known as a tokamak. It employs magnetic fields to control an internal plasma and prompt fusion reactions.

Another is called inertial confinement, which works by freezing pea-sized pellets of gas into metal capsules. The gas is usually a combination of heavy isotopes of hydrogen. Then, the pellets are blasted with lasers, heating the gas up to 400 million degrees Fahrenheit and transforming it into a plasma where fusion can occur.

However, the hydrogen gas expands and causes the metal to explode before a fusion reaction can be created. The explosion happens when the metal capsules become unstable and start to flow. Banerjee and his team realized that molten metal behaved similarly to mayonnaise at lower temperatures.

Mayonnaise is an emulsion of egg, oil, and an acid such as vinegar. It can be elastic, bouncing back when you push on it. It can also be plastic, which means it flows and doesn’t bounce back.

Yulia Furman – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only

“If you put a stress on mayonnaise, it will start to deform, but if you remove the stress, it goes back to its original shape,” Banerjee said.

“So there’s an elastic phase followed by a stable plastic phase. The next phase is when it starts flowing, and that’s where the instability kicks in.”

The researchers placed mayo into a machine and accelerated the egg and oil emulsion until it began to flow.

Then, they identified the conditions in which instabilities occurred. They found that the instabilities could be delayed or suppressed to maintain the fusion reaction for longer.

Whether or not nuclear fusion could be a source of energy on Earth someday remains to be seen.

The study was published in the journal Physical Review E.

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Emily  Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a ... More about Emily Chan

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