Science is successful because the physical laws we discover on Earth
work everywhere and everywhen. We use laboratory experiments to expand
our understanding of physical processes and then apply these results
to the processes throughout the Universe. In some cases laboratory
experiments can reproduce similar physics. For example, highly charged
plasmas can be created in the laboratory to study the collisions
between electrons and ions that occur in the hot solar corona. In
other cases, such as in the extreme environments of black holes, we
cannot reproduce the conditions. However, even in those cases, the
pattern of observed spectral signatures allows us to identify the
species and determine some of the physical conditions and
processes. Spectral features observed in the solar corona are also
observed from black hole sources.
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