Plasma and the Universe : Dedicated to Professor Hannes Alfvén on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday, 30 May 1988

Ten years ago, Astrophysics and Space Science dedicated its May issue to Professor Hannes Alfven on the occasion of his seventieth birthday. Time has now come to honour him on his eightieth birthday by publishing this special issue of Astrophysics and Space Science.The preface of the May 1978 issue outlined his life and work until then. In the decade that has passed since that time, the outstanding significance of his pioneering work has become even more evident. The waves that he discovered long ago are of fundamental importance to the whole field of plasma physics, in the laboratory as well as in space. Likewise, the concept of gyrocentre drift and the perturbation theory based on it are powerful tools for studying charged particle motion, and are being widely used and developed to ever higher sophistication. The critical velocity phenomenon in the interaction of a plasma and a neutral gas, which was proposed by Alfven with amazing intuition -subsequently observed experimentally and only much later explained by theoreticians -has attracted sharply increased interest in recent years, following its observation in space.The latest decade has not only verified the importance of Alfven's past work, it has also been a decade in which he has continued a very active scientific life with new contributions to science especially in the field of cosmogony. For example, he has made use of the latest data from the Voyager spacecraft to test, with remarkable success, his theoretical predictions about the detailed structure of the Saturnian rings.Hannes Alfven is, in the true sense of the words, a pioneer and an explorer who has opened new vistas in science. His early contributions earned him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1970. These contributions date back to the 1940's and were at that time highly controversial and largely ignored by the scientific community. Much later the progress of experiments and observations have proved his ideas to be right.However, Hannes Alfven never rests on his laurels. In recent years his mind has turned to the 'Plasma Universe', ranging in space from the Earth's own neighbourhood throughout the dephts of the Cosmos, and in time to the events in the past that led to the formation of the solar system. Some of his concepts about the Plasma Universe are Front Matter....Pages i-vi Special Issue Dedicated to Professor Hannes Alfvén on the Occasion of his 80th Birthday, 30 May 1988....Pages 1-2 Observations Of Propagating Double Layers in a High Current Discharge....Pages 3-13 Critical Ionization Velocity Interaction: Some Unsolved Problems....Pages 15-30 Velocity Limitation of a Neutral Dust Cloud Colliding with a Magnetized Plasma....Pages 31-42 Dynamical Aspects of Electrostatic Double Layers....Pages 43-71 Cosmic Electric Currents and the Generalized Bennett Relation....Pages 73-84 Elementary Ideas Behind Plasma Physics....Pages 85-97 The Dielectric Analogue of Magnetohydrodynamics....Pages 99-104 Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Interactions — Near-Earth Manifestations of the Plasma Universe....Pages 105-133 Acceleration of Auroral Particles by Magnetic-Field Aligned Electric Fields....Pages 135-147 Parallel Electric Fields Accelerating Ions and Electrons in the Same Direction....Pages 149-154 Birkeland Currents in the Earth’s Magnetosphere....Pages 155-169 Auroral and Magnetic Variations in the Polar Cusp and Cleft — Signatures of Magnetopause Boundary-Layer Dynamics....Pages 171-199 Plasma Acceleration, Injection, and Loss: Observational Aspects....Pages 201-213 Charged Dust in the Earth’s Magnetosphere....Pages 215-229 Generalized Adiabatic Theory Applied to the Magnetotail Current Sheet....Pages 231-256 Particle Dynamics and Currents in the Magnetotail....Pages 257-277 Hydromagnetic Waves Associated with Possible Flux Transfer Events....Pages 279-290 Free Convection and Mass Transfer Effects on the Magnetohydrodynamic Flows Near A Moving Plate in A Rotating Medium....Pages 291-301 An Electric-Current Description of Solar Flares....Pages 303-309 Solar Flares Through Electric Current Interaction....Pages 311-319 Global Wave Patterns in the Sun’s Magnetic Field....Pages 321-336 Temporal Variations of Low-Energy Cosmic-Ray Protons on Decadal and Million Year Time-Scales: Implications to Their Origin....Pages 337-346 Electrodynamics of the EUV/X-Ray Bright Point and Filamentary Flux Loop Complexes....Pages 347-352 Peculiar Solar Flares and Plages of Possible Interest for the Study of Electric Quadrupole Lines of NaI and MgII....Pages 353-356 Band Structure of the Solar System: An Objective Test of the Grouping of Planets and Satellites....Pages 357-372 The Cosmogonic Shadow Effect....Pages 373-406 The Role of Magnetohydrodynamics in Heliospheric Space Plasma Physics Research....Pages 407-425 Alfvén Waves in a Space Plasma and its Role in the Solar Wind Interaction with Comets....Pages 427-438 Modeling a Cometary Nucleus....Pages 439-449 Filamentation of Volcanic Plumes on the Jovian Satellite IO....Pages 451-461 In Situ Acceleration and Gradients of Charged Particles in the Outer Solar System Observed by the Voyager Spacecraft....Pages 463-486 Interaction of Interstellar Pick-Up Ions with the Solar Wind....Pages 487-505 The Even-Odd Systematics in R -Process Nuclide Abundances....Pages 507-517 The Solubility Problem of Heavy Elements in Internal Stellar Plasma Revisited....Pages 519-533 Electron Heating in Superhigh Mach Number Shocks....Pages 535-547 ‘Dead’ Pulsars: Cosmic-Ray Sources....Pages 549-556 The Effects of Mutual Irradiation on the Observed Radial Velocity of the Components of Close Binary Systems....Pages 557-586 Magnetic Confinement of Cosmic Clouds....Pages 587-614 Mass Pick-Up in Astronomical Flows....Pages 615-627 Infrared Emission From Interstellar Plasma....Pages 629-633 On the Fluctuations of the Surface Brightness of Galaxies....Pages 635-638 On the Dynamics of the Metagalaxy....Pages 639-658 Tearing Down Disciplinary Barriers....Pages 659-667