Scientists finally explain why microwaved grapes emit glorious bursts of plasma
The mystery of the glorious fireball emitted by microwaved grapes (featured in my novel Little Brother) has been resolved, thanks to a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
in which Trent University researchers Hamza Khattak and Aaron Slepkov
explain how they destroyed a dozen microwaves before figuring out that
the grapes were just the right size and had enough humidity to set up
standing waves that amplify the microwaves – and anything roughly
grape-sized will do the same.The paper is offline at both PNAS and Sci-Hub, which is weird, but there’s good coverage of it at Ars and Wired.