From the November 2009 issue of Discover Magazine, originally published online October 21, 2009:
Image by: Prof. Paul Woodward, Laboratory for Computational Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota
Stellar turbulence!
This computer-rendered image depicts a Rayleigh-Taylor instability: a turbulent, gravity-driven mixing of fluids that occurs in stars (and in boiling water) when a heavy substance sits atop a lighter one.
Astrophysicists at the University of Minnesota conducted a supercomputer simulation of sun-like stars to model this turbulence, which violently but effectively circulates heat in the region just below the stellar surface.
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