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.
NASA's IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) has helped astronomers better understand the shapes of structures essential to a black hole—specifically, the disk of material swirling around it and the shifting plasma ...
Astronomy
Dec 9, 2024
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A small team of astrophysicists at the University of California, Los Angeles, working with colleagues from the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of Colorado, Boulder, has found evidence that Alfvén waves in ...
A research team has presented a mechanism that explains how coronal dimmings—darkened, depleted areas on the sun caused by intense plasma eruptions—recover.
Astronomy
Nov 21, 2024
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Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental physical process in plasmas, through which the magnetic energy is converted into plasma kinetic energy and thermal energy rapidly. Current sheets in turbulent plasma are the key trigger ...
Planetary Sciences
Nov 11, 2024
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When NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by Uranus in 1986, it provided scientists' first—and, so far, only—close glimpse of this strange, sideways-rotating outer planet. Alongside the discovery of new moons and rings, baffling ...
Planetary Sciences
Nov 11, 2024
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Our solar system dwells in a low-density environment called the Local Hot Bubble (LHB), filled by a tenuous, million-degree hot gas emitting dominantly in soft X-rays. A team led by scientists at the Max Planck Institute ...
Astronomy
Oct 29, 2024
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There is a profound mystery in our sun. While the sun's surface temperature measures around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, its outer atmosphere, known as the solar corona, measures more like 2 million degrees Fahrenheit, about ...
Plasma Physics
Oct 11, 2024
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The first moving images of a black hole could reveal swirls of plasma and collapsing stars, deepening our understanding of the universe.
Astronomy
Oct 11, 2024
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Fusion researchers are increasingly turning to the element tungsten when looking for an ideal material for components that will directly face the plasma inside fusion reactors known as tokamaks and stellarators. But under ...
Plasma Physics
Oct 7, 2024
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Mission engineers at NASA have turned off the plasma science instrument aboard the Voyager 2 spacecraft due to the probe's gradually shrinking electrical power supply.
Planetary Sciences
Oct 2, 2024
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