Magnetic Storms

Gold, T., Magnetic Storms, Space Sci. Rev., 1, 100-114 (1962) (ADS)

The cartoon

(click on the image for a larger version)

A second T. Gold cartoon from the same 1962 paper. Here he pointed out the contradiction between the repeated occurrence of what we now call CMEs, and the then-known rough invariability of the interplanetary magnetic field. Why would it not intensify continually as more and more CMEs happened? This would have to be the result of some process between the corona and the solar wind, essentially, and we now discuss this as a form of magnetic reconnection ("interchange reconnection"); see the Crooker cartoon for this possibly unnecessary neologism.

Date: 2007 September 24

Update: 2019 February 13