We study exploding stars in our quest to make reliable fusion energy a reality, but chances are we’ve been thinking about supernovae wrong.

New research led by the University of Michigan shows that heat plays a significant role in the way materials mix during fusion reactions—a factor that has, to this point, been left out of the discussion. It’s a finding that should help focus future studies of how supernovae work and what we can learn from them.

Power from fusion, cleaner and more efficient energy than what we currently derive from fission, is the goal. Nuclear fusion reactions are constantly underway in the cores of stars, making them a natural research subject for scientists trying to recreate them for energy production on Earth.

It’s impossible to get a peek inside those far away stars, so scientists take a look at the next best things: supernovae and small-scale fusion reactions created in the lab. And a key component of fusion reactions they study is Rayleigh-Taylor mixing, which occurs during both.

When a supernova occurs, it flings matter outward, mixing different plasmas with various elements that include iron, carbon helium and hydrogen. Rayleigh-Taylor instability, the dynamic of mixing liquids, gases or plasmas with different densities, leads to the creation of supernova remnants.

U-M scientists believe our methods of modeling the mixing that occurs in supernovae have historically been incomplete. Energy fluxes causing heating have a significant impact on the mixing that occurs. Yet heat is not a consideration in astrophysical modeling of Rayleigh-Taylor.

“Rayleigh-Taylor has been studied for over 100 years,” said Carolyn Kuranz, director of U-M’s Center for Laser Experimental Astrophysical Research and an associate research scientist of climate and space sciences and engineering. “But the effects of these high energy fluxes, these mechanisms that cause heating, have never been studied.”

The researchers found that increased energy fluxes and their resulting heating reduces the amount of mixing that occurs—decreasing the Rayleigh-Taylor instability. In addition to Kuranz, the scientific team includes physicists Hye-Sook Park and Channing Huntington of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.