Space physics
Space physics, also known as space plasma physics, is the study of naturally occurring
Space physics is both a
Closely related fields include
History
Space physics can be traced to the Chinese who discovered the principle of the
In the late 1870s, Henri Becquerel offered the first physical explanation for the statistical correlations that had been recorded: sunspots must be a source of fast protons. They are guided to the poles by the Earth's magnetic field. In the early twentieth century, these ideas led Kristian Birkeland to build a terrella, or laboratory device which simulates the Earth's magnetic field in a vacuum chamber, and which uses a cathode ray tube to simulate the energetic particles which compose the solar wind. A theory began to be formulated about the interaction between the Earth's magnetic field and the solar wind.
Space physics did not begin in earnest, however, until the first in situ measurements in the early 1950s, when a team led by
See also
- Effects of spaceflight on the human body
- Space environment
- Space science
- Weightlessness
References
- .
- ^ "Space Physics Textbook". 2006-11-26. Archived from the original on December 18, 2008. Retrieved 2008-12-31.
- .
Further reading
- Kallenrode, May-Britt (2004). Space Physics: An Introduction to Plasmas and Particles in the Heliosphere and Magnetospheres. Springer. ISBN 978-3-540-20617-0.
- Gombosi, Tamas (1998). Physics of the Space Environment. New York: ISBN 978-0-521-59264-2.
External links
Media related to Space physics at Wikimedia Commons
