Radiative heating achieves the ultimate regime of thermal convection.

The absorption of light or radiation drives turbulent convection inside stars, supernovae, frozen lakes, and Earth's mantle. In these contexts, the goal of laboratory and numerical studies is to determine the relation between the internal temperature gradients and the heat flux transported by the turbulent flow. This is the constitutive law of turbulent convection, to be input into large-scale models of such natural flows.