My opinion is that in the past 30 odd years, solar/space research has not influenced fundamental physics at all. While it is true that we have made a large number of remarkable discoveries, some of which are really astonisihing and changed our view of nature, they remain discoveries of new natural phenomena that can be described in terms of exisiting physics. Howver, there is not much new physics in it. It is suprising to see how little solar/space physics has changed, in a profound way, the way we understand the fundamental laws of physics or helped us generalise them or challenge existing laws. If you compare with astronomy/astrophysics and particle physics, the difference in profoundness is enormous. Don't get me wrong, the solar/space physics community has improved our knowledge of the sun and the solar-terrestrial interactions, as well as other planets in the solar system, it in a most dramatic way. But there is very little outcome in terms of fundamenta from these exercies...

Hi Bo, your view is even less optimistic than my own! I can at least point to the "neutrino problem" as something fundamentally important to physics itself, coming from solar physics. I wonder if one could make the case that our understanding of basic nonlinear processes has greatly improved by studying, for example, reconnection in the solar atmosphere? I don't think so, not yet anyway.

Thanks for the contribution, even if it is a little depressing!

In my experience, a typical solar physicist is more into traditional plasma physics than into neutrino physics. The neutrino problem is typically addressed more by astrophysicists and particle physicists.

We look at the world around us and ask the question why is this particular phenomena happening and how can I tell when it will happen again? If answering those questions is insufficiently "fundamental" because the process in question is macroscopic and non-relativistic, so be it. The question is still valid, the research can be important and to some of us fulfilling. The fact that many of the exact solutions to our equations can be found in Chandra's hydrodynamic and hydromagnetic stability does not mean that we are small minded people tinkering at the edges. As an example, current solar and space physics observations are the standard for high Reynolds number, high Lundqust number physics. No-one else has the spatial and temporal resolution data to study this "fundamentally non-linear" system.

Have we influenced fundamental physics? Only the fluids, plasmas and radiative transfer part of physics - I'll let others decide if that is sufficiently fundamental or not.

My comment was not that it was not sufficiently "fundamental", but rather that is was not sufficiently "physics"! Merely observing nature and presenting the data, however revolutionary, beautiful and mind-boggling they might be, and however difficult it was to obtain them, is not physics. It is important to do these taxonomic exercises since they might lead to entirely new physics, as atomic spectroscopy once upon a time led to quantum mechanics. But then we need people who are prepared and brave enough to set aside time to do this - and funding agencies that do hot routinely turn down every funding proposal for those brave ones that find such activities challenging, important, meaningful and necessary.

Alex Dessler has written some interesting, though-provoking essays about this where he compares space physics with particle physics. In particle physics, gigantic heroic efforts are made to push our knowledge of the fundamental laws of nature beyond their established limits. (Higgs, supersymmetry, GZK, ...) whereas very little of this is done in space physics. Instead, taking data with pretty much standard instruments seems to be the only true way of doing it. Alex even goes on to say that "If space physics continues like this it will die".!

In response to Ed DeLuca: Whoa- it seems my

question is taken beyond its original meaning. I

would not use the phrase "small minded" (at least

not in print!) Instead I am genuinely interested

in the question as to whether we are on the

downslope of scientific returns.

Your statement of the "standard for high

Reynolds..." I think I agree with. But I will

absolutely argue that we are using only crude

observations to analyze a system that is

controlled by magnetism - we must surely attempt

at least to to measure magnetic fields as well as

the plasma. I also agree with the statement that

we indeed have the "the spatial and temporal

resolution data to study this "fundamentally

non-linear" system. " But we cannot, I think,

continue to just "study" this, we must really pose

and reject hypotheses in this system. To do this

we must make novel measurements with more and

quite different information than we currently do,

targeted directly at specific questions.

Consider: we have 40+ years of space observations

of the corona. Almost 100% of this is done with

no measurements of magnetic fields across this

system- instead we have model "extrapolations" and

"proxies" (plasma loop = magnetic loop etc ) and

various other things looking obliquely at some end

products, not the causes of many phenomena. What

would we know about tokamak plasmas if we applied

existing solar instrumentation remotely to them?

We can and should do better and not accept all

this funny business of only looking at the

magnetic properties of the photosphere and thermal

properties of higher layers.

According to Physics Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg, physics is a science whose aim is "...not just to describe the world as we find it, but to explain — in terms of a few fundamental principles — why the world is the way it is." Physics adopts a hypothetic-deductive method where advancements are made by making a series of systematic experiments and/or observations of nature and then, after analysis and clever thinking, proposing new extensions or additions to the existing set of laws of physics. Based on these new laws, taken as postulates, we deduce hypotheses about new physical phenomena and make experiments/observations that either falsify or support these hypotheses. An example of this is the hypothesis of the existence of the Higgs particle, that was based on a hypothesis made by Phil Anderson on how EM waves/photons behave when they interact with plasma/plasmons. Anderson's hypothesis, that in turn was based on a hypothesis by Julian Schwinger about massive gauge bosons, could easily have been formulated by a space plasma physicist.

According to Sir Rudolf Peierls, a new law/postulate of physics ‘...must firstly leave undisturbed the successes of earlier work and not upset the explanations of observations that had been used in support of earlier ideas. Secondly it must explain in a reasonable manner the new evidence which brought the previous ideas into doubt and which suggested the new hypothesis. And thirdly it must predict new phenomena or new relationships between different phenomena, which were not known or not clearly understood at the time when it was invented.’

Sadly, very little of this creativity seems to be present in current-day space physics.

A gripping discussion. I'm not sure that I can add to it, other than to say that I am sympathetic to Bo's point of view, and have been for years.

Space Physics has a number of fundamental obstacles to scientific profundity (as Bo put it). Space plasmas occupy a middle ground --- they're not particularly hot, not particularly cold, not particularly dense (they are the most tenuous). They are resistant to laboratory simulation (e.g. length scales too large for vacuum chambers). They are difficult to study in situ (satellites are expensive, have very long program duration, and often travel at supersonic speeds through the plasma). Space plasmas are difficult to study remotely -- the most useful radar instrument (incoherent scatter) is quite expensive to build and operate. And of course, space plasmas are difficult to simulate computationally because of the range of mass, interaction length, and interaction times involved.

Yet another challenge is that Space Weather has not risen in the mind of the public to the level of Tropospheric Weather. Everyone knows what it's like to get rain on their picnic, but hardly anyone notices when the Kp index exceeds 7, or when there has been an X30 solar flare.

These are challenging times for space physicists.