Below is a close up simulation of a collisionless shock like Earth's bow shock. Here, particles encounter an obstacle at Mach speed, meaning that they travel faster than they can warn future particles of said obstacle, leading to a sudden jump in density, temperature, and magnetic field strength. We say these systems are collisionless because the particles don't directly bump into each other to cause this shock, but instead interact through electromagnetic forces.

Plasma composes nearly 99.9% of the entire universe and nearly every plasma system contains plasma waves and turbulence. These processes drive seemingly chaotic fluctuations that impact the energy partitioning of the system. Below, we see an example of this in a simulation of a shock. showing just the shock front and the region downstream from it. See Juno et al 2023 to learn more!