plasma tagged posts

When the sun expels plasma, the solar wind cools as it expands through space – but not as much as the laws of physics would predict. Physicists now know the reason. University of Wisconsin-Madison physicists provide an explanation for the discrepancy in solar wind temperature. Their findings suggest ways to study solar wind phenomena in research labs and learn about solar wind properties in other star systems.

“People have been studying the solar wind since its discovery in 1959, but there are many important properties of this plasma which are still not well understood,” says Stas Boldyrev, professor of physics and lea...

Physicists extend Rice Convection Model with details of magnetospheric buoyancy waves. The solar wind that pummels the Earth’s dayside magnetosphere causes turbulence, like air over a wing. Physicists at Rice University have developed new methods to characterize how that influences space weather on the nightside.

It’s rarely quiet up there...

Scientists have announced a major new finding about how matter behaves in the extreme conditions of the sun’s atmosphere. Their work has shed new light on the exotic but poorly understood ‘fourth state of matter,’ known as plasma, which could hold the key to developing safe, clean and efficient -nuclear energy generators on Earth.
The scientists used large radio telescopes and ultraviolet cameras on a NASA spacecraft to.

Most of the matter we encounter in our everyday lives comes in the form of solid, liquid or gas, but the majority of the Universe is composed of plasma – a highly unstable and electrically charged fluid. The Sun is also made up of this plasma.

Despite being the most commo...

Scientists have discovered tadpole-shaped jets coming out of regions with intense magnetic fields on the Sun. Unlike those living on Earth, these “tadpoles” – formally called pseudo-shocks – are made entirely of plasma, the electrically conducting material made of charged particles that account for an estimated 99% of the observable universe. The discovery adds a new clue to one of the longest-standing mysteries in astrophysics.

For 150 years scientists have been trying to figure out why the wispy upper atmosphere of the Sun – the corona is over 200 times hotter than the solar surface...