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.
A new study led by Southwest Research Institute's Dr. Michael Starkey has provided observational evidence from the SwRI-led Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Mission of pickup ions (PUIs) and associated wave activity in the ...
Planetary Sciences
Sep 10, 2025
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For the first time, researchers have found that the number of electrical discharges on a spacecraft directly correlates to the number of electrons in the surrounding environment—information that could help scientists better ...
Space Exploration
Sep 1, 2025
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Investigating solar corona structures has led Paul Bellan, Caltech professor of applied physics, and his former graduate student Yang Zhang (Ph.D. '24) to discover a new equilibrium state of the magnetic field and its associated ...
General Physics
Aug 25, 2025
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Researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have made a new discovery by observing and analyzing the first new type of plasma wave in Jupiter's aurora. This research helps us understand "alien aurora" on other ...
Planetary Sciences
Aug 24, 2025
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Recent observations of Jupiter's powerful magnetic field by NASA's Juno spacecraft have uncovered a never-before-documented variety of plasma waves that seem to defy our current understanding of planetary magnetospheres.
Instead of a tempest in a teapot, imagine the cosmos in a canister. Scientists have performed experiments using nested, spinning cylinders to confirm that an uneven wobble in a ring of electrically conductive fluid like liquid ...
Planetary Sciences
Jul 7, 2025
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75
New research led by a Southwest Research Institute scientist identified a new source of energetic particles near the sun. These definitive observations were made by instruments aboard NASA's Parker Solar Probe, which detected ...
Astronomy
Jun 3, 2025
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Turbulence in nature refers to the complex, time-dependent, and spatially varying fluctuations that develop in fluids such as water, air, and plasma. It is a universal phenomenon that appears across a vast range of scales ...
Plasma Physics
Jun 2, 2025
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76
Astronomers have developed a computer simulation to explore, in unprecedented detail, magnetism and turbulence in the interstellar medium (ISM)—the vast ocean of gas and charged particles that lies between stars in the ...
Astronomy
May 13, 2025
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102
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured new details of the auroras on our solar system's largest planet. The dancing lights observed on Jupiter are hundreds of times brighter than those seen on Earth. With ...
Astronomy
May 12, 2025
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