Space and astrophysical plasma as a physical system refers to ionized gases permeating cosmic environments such as the interstellar and intergalactic medium, stellar winds, accretion disks, and magnetospheres. These plasmas are typically low-collisionality, often magnetized, and governed by collective electromagnetic interactions described by magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), kinetic theory, or hybrid models. Key properties include Debye shielding, anisotropic pressure, and nonthermal particle distributions, with dynamics dominated by magnetic reconnection, turbulence, waves, and instabilities. Space and astrophysical plasmas are central to energy and momentum transport, cosmic ray acceleration, and radiation processes across a vast range of spatial and temporal scales.
When a gas is highly energized, its electrons get torn from the parent atoms, resulting in a plasma—the oft-forgotten fourth state of matter (along with solid, liquid, and gas). When we think of plasmas, we normally think ...
Plasma Physics
Dec 8, 2025
0
39
Envision a time when hundreds of spacecraft are exploring the solar system and beyond. That's the future that NASA's ESCAPADE, or escape and plasma acceleration and dynamics explorers, mission will help unleash: one where ...
Space Exploration
Nov 13, 2025
0
1
The sun is governed by a strict rhythm. The magnetic activity of the sun displays a cyclic variation, reaching a maximum approximately every eleven years. Two enormous plasma circulations, each in one solar hemisphere, set ...
Astronomy
Nov 5, 2025
0
42
Astronomers have used simultaneous ground-based and space-based observations to measure the temperature and velocity of gas ejected from a young sun-like star. The result showed a two-component ejection consisting of a hot ...
Astrobiology
Oct 28, 2025
0
1
Imagine a cloud that shines like a neon sign, but instead of raindrops, it contains countless microscopic dust grains floating in midair. This is a dusty plasma, a bizarre state of matter found both in deep space and in the ...
Plasma Physics
Oct 21, 2025
0
69
In recent years, NASA's Parker Solar Probe has given us a close-up look at the sun. Among the probe's revelations was the presence of numerous kinks, or "switchbacks," in magnetic field lines in the sun's outer atmosphere. ...
Planetary Sciences
Oct 8, 2025
0
123
A hundred years before the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration released the first image of a black hole in 2019—located at the heart of the galaxy M87—astronomer Heber Curtis had already discovered a strange jet protruding ...
Astronomy
Oct 6, 2025
0
104
It rains on the sun, and thanks to researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy (IfA), we finally know why. Unlike water that falls from the sky on Earth, solar rain happens in the sun's corona, a region ...
Astronomy
Oct 1, 2025
0
24
Plasma is a state of matter that emerges when a gas is heated to sufficiently high temperatures, prompting some electrons to become free from atoms. This state of matter has been the focus of many astrophysical studies, as ...
Dark matter is an elusive type of matter that does not emit, reflect or absorb light, yet is predicted to account for most of the universe's mass. As it cannot be detected and studied using conventional experimental techniques, ...
