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Meers Oppenheim (born 1962, Bethesda, Maryland) is an American physicist who is Professor of Astronomy at Boston University. His primary research interests include computational and theoretical space plasma physics, dynamics of the ionosphere and solar atmosphere, particle-wave interactions in plasmas, and the physics of meteor trails. [1]
Oppenheim received his B.S. and M.Eng. in 1984 and 1990 from Cornell University's School of Applied and Engineering Physics. He then received his Ph.D. of Electrical Engineering in 1995 from Cornell's Space Plasma Physics Group. [2]
Oppenheim began his career as a programmer and junior analyst at Jack Faucett Associates, Inc. in Chevy Chase, Maryland from 1980 to 1982. [2] From 1984 to 1986, he worked as a staff physicist at the Physics International Corporation in San Leandro, California. [2]
In 1988, Oppenheim was a research assistant at Cornell University. In 1995, he became a Max Planck Society Postdoctoral Scientist. [2] In 1996, he became a research associate at the University of Colorado, Boulder. [2]
In 1998, Oppenheim began working as an assistant professor of astronomy at Boston University. He became an associate professor in 2004, and in 2013, a full professor. In 2018, he became the director of graduate admissions at Boston University. [2]
Oppenheim studies space plasma physics using supercomputer simulations, theory, and data. He works on a range of research topics, including ionospheric and solar collisional plasmas, particle-wave interactions, and the physics of meteor trails. Since 2016, he has been working to incorporate the important effects of ionospheric turbulence into planetary scale simulations of the coupled magnetosphere, ionosphere and atmosphere. He has also been trying to model wave heating of the solar chromosphere. Most recently, he has also been working on understanding the effects of UV photoelectrons on the ionosphere and their observational consequences. [1]
An aurora , also commonly known as the northern lights or southern lights, is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly seen in high-latitude regions. Auroras display dynamic patterns of brilliant lights that appear as curtains, rays, spirals, or dynamic flickers covering the entire sky.
The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is a University of Alaska Fairbanks program which researches the ionosphere – the highest, ionized part of Earth's atmosphere.
A whistler is a very low frequency (VLF) electromagnetic (radio) wave generated by lightning. Frequencies of terrestrial whistlers are 1 kHz to 30 kHz, with maximum frequencies usually at 3 kHz to 5 kHz. Although they are electromagnetic waves, they occur at audio frequencies, and can be converted to audio using a suitable receiver. They are produced by lightning strikes where the impulse travels along the Earth's magnetic field lines from one hemisphere to the other. They undergo dispersion of several kHz due to the slower velocity of the lower frequencies through the plasma environments of the ionosphere and magnetosphere. Thus they are perceived as a descending tone which can last for a few seconds. The study of whistlers categorizes them into Pure Note, Diffuse, 2-Hop, and Echo Train types.
Magnetic reconnection is a physical process occurring in electrically conducting plasmas, in which the magnetic topology is rearranged and magnetic energy is converted to kinetic energy, thermal energy, and particle acceleration. Magnetic reconnection involves plasma flows at a substantial fraction of the Alfvén wave speed, which is the fundamental speed for mechanical information flow in a magnetized plasma.
Cluster II is a space mission of the European Space Agency, with NASA participation, to study the Earth's magnetosphere over the course of nearly two solar cycles. The mission is composed of four identical spacecraft flying in a tetrahedral formation. As a replacement for the original Cluster spacecraft which were lost in a launch failure in 1996, the four Cluster II spacecraft were successfully launched in pairs in July and August 2000 onboard two Soyuz-Fregat rockets from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. In February 2011, Cluster II celebrated 10 years of successful scientific operations in space. In February 2021, Cluster II celebrated 20 years of successful scientific operations in space. As of March 2023, its mission has been extended until September 2024. The China National Space Administration/ESA Double Star mission operated alongside Cluster II from 2004 to 2007.
A Birkeland current is a set of electrical currents that flow along geomagnetic field lines connecting the Earth's magnetosphere to the Earth's high latitude ionosphere. In the Earth's magnetosphere, the currents are driven by the solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field and by bulk motions of plasma through the magnetosphere. The strength of the Birkeland currents changes with activity in the magnetosphere. Small scale variations in the upward current sheets accelerate magnetospheric electrons which, when they reach the upper atmosphere, create the Auroras Borealis and Australis. In the high latitude ionosphere, the Birkeland currents close through the region of the auroral electrojet, which flows perpendicular to the local magnetic field in the ionosphere. The Birkeland currents occur in two pairs of field-aligned current sheets. One pair extends from noon through the dusk sector to the midnight sector. The other pair extends from noon through the dawn sector to the midnight sector. The sheet on the high latitude side of the auroral zone is referred to as the Region 1 current sheet and the sheet on the low latitude side is referred to as the Region 2 current sheet.
The plasmasphere, or inner magnetosphere, is a region of the Earth's magnetosphere consisting of low-energy (cool) plasma. It is located above the ionosphere. The outer boundary of the plasmasphere is known as the plasmapause, which is defined by an order of magnitude drop in plasma density. In 1963 American scientist Don Carpenter and Soviet astronomer Konstantin Gringauz proved the plasmasphere and plasmapause's existence from the analysis of very low frequency (VLF) whistler wave data. Traditionally, the plasmasphere has been regarded as a well behaved cold plasma with particle motion dominated entirely by the geomagnetic field and, hence, co-rotating with the Earth.
The magnetosphere of Jupiter is the cavity created in the solar wind by Jupiter's magnetic field. Extending up to seven million kilometers in the Sun's direction and almost to the orbit of Saturn in the opposite direction, Jupiter's magnetosphere is the largest and most powerful of any planetary magnetosphere in the Solar System, and by volume the largest known continuous structure in the Solar System after the heliosphere. Wider and flatter than the Earth's magnetosphere, Jupiter's is stronger by an order of magnitude, while its magnetic moment is roughly 18,000 times larger. The existence of Jupiter's magnetic field was first inferred from observations of radio emissions at the end of the 1950s and was directly observed by the Pioneer 10 spacecraft in 1973.
A double layer is a structure in a plasma consisting of two parallel layers of opposite electrical charge. The sheets of charge, which are not necessarily planar, produce localised excursions of electric potential, resulting in a relatively strong electric field between the layers and weaker but more extensive compensating fields outside, which restore the global potential. Ions and electrons within the double layer are accelerated, decelerated, or deflected by the electric field, depending on their direction of motion.
Satya Prakash is an Indian plasma physicist and a former senior professor at the Physical Research Laboratory. He is known for his studies on Langmuir probes and other contributions in space and plasma sciences. A protégé of Vikram Sarabhai, Satya Prakash is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies such as Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and National Academy of Sciences, India as well as the Gujarat Science Academy and is a recipient of the Hari Om Ashram Prerit Senior Scientist Award. The Government of India honored him with Padma Shri, the fourth highest Indian civilian award for his contributions to the discipline of Physics, in 1982.
Electromagnetic hiss is a naturally occurring Extremely Low Frequency/Very Low Frequency electromagnetic wave that is generated in the plasma of either the Earth's ionosphere or magnetosphere. Its name is derived from its incoherent, structureless spectral properties which, when played through an audio system, sound like white noise.
Karissa Y. Sanbonmatsu is an American structural biologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. She works on the mechanism of non-coding RNA complexes including the ribosome, riboswitches, long non-coding RNAs, as well as chromatin. She was the first to perform an atomistic simulation of the ribosome, determine the secondary structure of an intact lncRNA and to publish a one billion atom simulation of a biomolecular complex.
Richard Mansergh Thorne was an American physicist and a distinguished professor in the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at UCLA. He was known for his contributions to space plasma physics. He was a fellow of the American Geophysical Union.
Mei-Ching Hannah Fok is a planetary scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center. She was awarded the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 2011 and elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2019. She has worked on the IMAGE, Van Allen Probes and TWINS missions.
William Henry Matthaeus is an American astrophysicist and plasma physicist. He is known for his research on turbulence in magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) and astrophysical plasmas, for which he was awarded the 2019 James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics.
Wen Li is a space physicist at Boston University. Her research interests include space plasma waves, Earth's radiation belt physics, solar-wind magnetosphere coupling, energetic particle precipitation, and Jovian magnetosphere and aurora: She is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.
Cynthia Cattell is a space plasma physicist known for her research on solar flares and radiation belts.
Mary Hudson is the Eleanor and Kelvin Smith Distinguished Professor of Physics at Dartmouth College. She is known for her research on the weather patterns that occur due to solar eruptions. She was elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 1984.
Michelle F. Thomsen is space physicist known for her research on the magnetospheres of Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn.
James Wynne Dungey (1923–2015) was a British space scientist who was pivotal in establishing the field of space weather and made significant contributions to the fundamental understanding of plasma physics.
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