Physicists solve a nuclear fusion.mystery with mayonnaise

Nuclear fusion technology could get a breakthrough from an unexpected place: mayonnaise. In a new study, scientists plopped the creamy condiment into a churning machine and set it whirling to see what conditions made it flow.

- TIA GHOSE

“We use mayonnaise because it behaves like a solid, but when subjected to a pressure gradient, it starts to flow,” said Arindam Banerjee, a mechanical engineer at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. This process could help explain the physics that occur at ultrahigh temperatures and pressures inside nuclear fusion reactors without having to create those extreme conditions.