Radiation Effects and Defects in Solids

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The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to physics:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solar wind</span> Stream of charged particles from the Sun

The solar wind is a stream of charged particles released from the Sun's outermost atmospheric layer, the corona. This plasma mostly consists of electrons, protons and alpha particles with kinetic energy between 0.5 and 10 keV. The composition of the solar wind plasma also includes a mixture of particle species found in the solar plasma: trace amounts of heavy ions and atomic nuclei of elements such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, neon, magnesium, silicon, sulfur, and iron. There are also rarer traces of some other nuclei and isotopes such as phosphorus, titanium, chromium, and nickel's isotopes 58Ni, 60Ni, and 62Ni. Superimposed with the solar-wind plasma is the interplanetary magnetic field. The solar wind varies in density, temperature and speed over time and over solar latitude and longitude. Its particles can escape the Sun's gravity because of their high energy resulting from the high temperature of the corona, which in turn is a result of the coronal magnetic field. The boundary separating the corona from the solar wind is called the Alfvén surface.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magnetohydrodynamics</span> Model of electrically conducting fluids

In physics and engineering, magnetohydrodynamics is a model of electrically conducting fluids that treats all interpenetrating particle species together as a single continuous medium. It is primarily concerned with the low-frequency, large-scale, magnetic behavior in plasmas and liquid metals and has applications in multiple fields including space physics, geophysics, astrophysics, and engineering.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solar flare</span> Eruption of electromagnetic radiation

A solar flare is a relatively intense, localized emission of electromagnetic radiation in the Sun's atmosphere. Flares occur in active regions and are often, but not always, accompanied by coronal mass ejections, solar particle events, and other eruptive solar phenomena. The occurrence of solar flares varies with the 11-year solar cycle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hannes Alfvén</span> Swedish electrical engineer, plasma physicist and Nobel laureate (1908-1995)

Hannes Olof Gösta Alfvén was a Swedish electrical engineer, plasma physicist and winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). He described the class of MHD waves now known as Alfvén waves. He was originally trained as an electrical power engineer and later moved to research and teaching in the fields of plasma physics and electrical engineering. Alfvén made many contributions to plasma physics, including theories describing the behavior of aurorae, the Van Allen radiation belts, the effect of magnetic storms on the Earth's magnetic field, the terrestrial magnetosphere, and the dynamics of plasmas in the Milky Way galaxy.

In particle physics, cyclotron radiation is electromagnetic radiation emitted by non-relativistic accelerating charged particles deflected by a magnetic field. The Lorentz force on the particles acts perpendicular to both the magnetic field lines and the particles' motion through them, creating an acceleration of charged particles that causes them to emit radiation as a result of the acceleration they undergo as they spiral around the lines of the magnetic field.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plasma cosmology</span> Non-standard model of the universe; emphasizes the role of ionized gases

Plasma cosmology is a non-standard cosmology whose central postulate is that the dynamics of ionized gases and plasmas play important, if not dominant, roles in the physics of the universe at interstellar and intergalactic scales. In contrast, the current observations and models of cosmologists and astrophysicists explain the formation, development, and evolution of large-scale structures as dominated by gravity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CRRES</span> NASA satellite

The Combined Release and Radiation Effects Satellite (CRRES) was launched on July 25, 1990, into a geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO) for a nominal three-year mission to investigate fields, plasmas, and energetic particles inside the Earth's magnetosphere. As part of the CRRES program, the SPACERAD project, managed by Air Force Geophysics Laboratory, investigated the radiation environment of the inner and outer radiation belts and measured radiation effects on state-of-the-art microelectronics devices.

Space environment is a branch of astronautics, aerospace engineering and space physics that seeks to understand and address conditions existing in space that affect the design and operation of spacecraft. A related subject, space weather, deals with dynamic processes in the solar-terrestrial system that can give rise to effects on spacecraft, but that can also affect the atmosphere, ionosphere and geomagnetic field, giving rise to several other kinds of effects on human technologies.

A dusty plasma is a plasma containing micrometer (10−6) to nanometer (10−9) sized particles suspended in it. Dust particles are charged and the plasma and particles behave as a plasma. Dust particles may form larger particles resulting in "grain plasmas". Due to the additional complexity of studying plasmas with charged dust particles, dusty plasmas are also known as complex plasmas.

Space physics, also known as space plasma physics, is the study of naturally occurring plasmas within Earth's upper atmosphere and the rest of the Solar System. It includes the topics of aeronomy, aurorae, planetary ionospheres and magnetospheres, radiation belts, and space weather. It also encompasses the discipline of heliophysics, which studies the solar physics of the Sun, its solar wind, the coronal heating problem, solar energetic particles, and the heliosphere.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heliophysics</span> Science of the heliosphere

Heliophysics is the physics of the Sun and its connection with the Solar System. NASA defines heliophysics as "(1) the comprehensive new term for the science of the Sun - Solar System Connection, (2) the exploration, discovery, and understanding of Earth's space environment, and (3) the system science that unites all of the linked phenomena in the region of the cosmos influenced by a star like our Sun."

Microstructured optical arrays (MOAs) are instruments for focusing x-rays. MOAs use total external reflection at grazing incidence from an array of small channels to bring x-rays to a common focus. This method of focusing means that MOAs exhibit low absorption. MOAs are used in applications that require x-ray focal spots in the order of few micrometers or below, such as radiobiology of individual cells. Current MOA-based focusing optics designs have two consecutive array components in order to reduce comatic aberration.

Winston H. Bostick was an American physicist who discovered plasmoids, plasma focus, and plasma vortex phenomena. He simulated cosmical astrophysics with laboratory plasma experiments, and showed that Hubble expansion can be produced with repulsive mutual induction between neighboring galaxies acting as homopolar generators. His work on plasmas was claimed to be evidence for finite-sized elementary particles and the composition of strings, but this is not accepted by mainstream science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Injun (satellite)</span>

The Injun program was a series of six satellites designed and built by researchers at the University of Iowa to observe various radiation and magnetic phenomena in the ionosphere and beyond.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NASU Institute of Physics</span> Research institute in Kyiv, Ukraine

The Institute of Physics (IOP) of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine founded in 1926 is the oldest research institution of physical science within the academy. Being on the path of both infrastructure development and research diversification for more than 80 years, the institute has eventually originated five more specialized research institutions.

One way of outlining the subject of radio science is listing the topics associated with it by authoritative bodies.

Solar radio emission refers to radio waves that are naturally produced by the Sun, primarily from the lower and upper layers of the atmosphere called the chromosphere and corona, respectively. The Sun produces radio emissions through four known mechanisms, each of which operates primarily by converting the energy of moving electrons into electromagnetic radiation. The four emission mechanisms are thermal bremsstrahlung (braking) emission, gyromagnetic emission, plasma emission, and electron-cyclotron maser emission. The first two are incoherent mechanisms, which means that they are the summation of radiation generated independently by many individual particles. These mechanisms are primarily responsible for the persistent "background" emissions that slowly vary as structures in the atmosphere evolve. The latter two processes are coherent mechanisms, which refers to special cases where radiation is efficiently produced at a particular set of frequencies. Coherent mechanisms can produce much larger brightness temperatures (intensities) and are primarily responsible for the intense spikes of radiation called solar radio bursts, which are byproducts of the same processes that lead to other forms of solar activity like solar flares and coronal mass ejections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donald Gurnett</span> American physicist (1940–2022)

Donald Alfred Gurnett was an American physicist and professor at the University of Iowa who specialized in plasma physics.