🚀 go-pugleaf

Just a short one. (Research time? Me :-?)

From time to time, I hear about "plasmoids". These are rarefied blots
of plasma, laced with magnetic flux. The plasma diffuses slowly across
the flux, while the flux attempts to eliminate loops, but can do so only
by doing work on the plasma. Researchers, some 20 years back, were
surprised at how long plasmoids took to dissipate.

As I understand it, Paul Koloc of Prometheus II has a serious scenario
for producing self-constricting structures like this, such that an inner
layer might be compressed to a fusion regime, but that's another story.

Question. What is the status these days of research, esp. into long-
lived plasmoids?

Application. Station a plasmoid cannon on a large rock, such as the
Moon or Deimos. Fire a stream into the maw of a Zubrin (didn't Alfven
come up with these first?) magsail, transferring momentum. Much more
effective, surely, than catching the solar wind.  

The crucial number, I'd think, is the velocity of the particles after
dissipation. Would the remaining plasma spread out rapidly to many
times the sail collection area?

A nice inspiration, perhaps, to solar wind and flare research.


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Jonathan Burns        |  They say you can go to the pits a thousand times
burns@latcs1.lat.oz.au|  and see nothing like the jaguar and the Black Knight.
Computer Science Dept |  I don't know 'bout that either. But I'm going back
La Trobe University   |  just in case I get lucky. 
                      |      Lucius Shepard, _Life During Wartime_
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