[cygnus_a]

As you might know, turbulence is when simple streams of laminar flow (in say, plasma) turn into chaotic filaments and vortices. As a filament or vortex separates/stretches from your laminar flow region, it steals away heat/energy.

Scientists often assume that you can accurately approximate stuff by neglecting irrelevant parts of the physics (basketballs vs ping pong balls; protons vs electrons). Turns out that ping pong balls greatly affect the outcome and amount of heat/energy dissipation in the basketballs.

This doesn't surprise me too much, since critical behavior often happens in regimes where two separate aggregate effects become relevant. But the details are all still just a big mystery :)

P.S. someone posted a much better description than the OP. I'll reiterate: http://news.mit.edu/2016/heat-loss-fusion-reactors-0121