Why solar wind is rhombic-shaped: Temperature and energy equipartition in cosmic plasmas explained
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - 05:30
in Astronomy & Space
Why the temperatures in the solar wind are almost the same in certain directions, and why different energy densities are practically identical, was until now not clear. With a new approach to calculating instability criteria for plasmas, researchers have solved both problems at once. They were the first to incorporate the effects of collisions of the solar wind particles in their model. This explains experimental data significantly better than previous calculations and can also be transferred to cosmic plasmas outside our solar system.