Credit: Composite image by Elle Starkman / Solar image by NASA Goddard Media Studios Every day, the sun ejects large amounts of a hot particle soup known as plasma toward Earth where it can disrupt telecommunications satellites and damage electrical grids. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and Princeton University's Department of Astrophysical Sciences have made a discovery that could lead to better predictions of this space weather and help safeguard sensitive infrastructure. The discovery comes from a new computer model that predicts the behavior of the plasma in the region above the surface of the sun known as the solar corona. The model was originally inspired by a similar model that describes the behavior of the plasma that fuels fusion reactions in doughnut-shaped fusion facilities known as tokamaks.