A yet more complicated view of plasma motion

[Francisl]

Riding the Plasma Wave: Evidence for a Type of Plasma Wave Moving Faster Than Theory Predicted

[jamesr]

The title of the article is a little misleading, I think. Whistlers (Right had polarised waves parallel, or slightly obliquely, to a magnetic field) are a standard part of MHD theory, and are known to travel faster than the local Alfven speed for short wavelengths
See http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/plasma/lectures/node51.html

The new thing here is NOT the speed of the wave, it is the mechanism that excites them, where the full kinetic description of what is going on in a shock front needs to be taken into account

[Brian H]

The description is kind of strange: powered by “instabilities”? Reads as though a high entropy state turns into a directional lower entropy one.

[benf]

A couple of related news items on pulsars I find fascinating. One is from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, a movie view of the Vela pulsar.

Another is research on the Chameleon pulsar with different wavelengths. Could you mitigate bremsstahlung by altering radio frequency production in the plasmoid? I remember Eric mentioning the LPP lab’s shielding requirement for radio frequency. edit: Are charged particles diminished when there is more radio frequency output?

[Author]

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