Follow-up on IHY-AGU Chapman Conference on Universal Heliophysical Processes held in Savannah, Georgia, 11-14 November 2008
Meeting Report
Website Objectives
Background
The title of the conference was selected to reflect the primary science theme
of the 2007–2008 International Heliophysical Year (IHY), advancing our
understanding of the fundamental heliophysical processes that govern the Sun,
Earth, and heliosphere. The conference
program was designed to reflect the approach to research described in the
2004 report of the National Research Council (NRC), Plasma
Physics of the Local Cosmos. The program was organized into five categories:
creation and annihilation of magnetic fields, formation of structures and transients,
plasma interactions, explosive energy conversion, and energetic particle acceleration.
This approach seeks to find universal physical laws through comparative studies
in the laboratory of the solar system. It contrasts with the less-focused, traditional
approach that deals with a heterogeneous collection of structures and processes
with fixed locations and distinct modes of organization, like sunspots, solar
flares, coronal mass ejections, the solar wind, solar energetic particles, Earth's
bow shock, magnetopause, magnetotail, magnetosphere, substorms, radiation belts,
and auroras. Each has been the sole or featured subject of at least one conference
and at least one book. This compartmentalization of study that pervades the
basic side of the field inhibits desired progress from a derivative to a stand-alone
field of science. It invites ad hoc explanations instead of universal explanations
that apply generally to plasmas in the cosmos. The objective of the conference
was to help focus efforts on finding the universal explanations.
A major advance at the conference was to expand the purview of the universal processes effort to include gravitationally-organized matter in a fundamental way, in contrast to the more limited purview of the NRC report, which was confined to magnetically-organized matter. This expansion makes the effort inclusive of the field of aeronomy, specifically of interactions between ionized and neutral media. Two new charts illustrate this updated purview.
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Acknowledgment and Disclaimer
The conference conveners thank the National Science Foundation for their generous support for travel expenses for seven students and four other participants through grant ATM-0845554.
Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.