Description

Spacecraft such as the Pioneer, Vela, and Voyager have explored the interplanetary medium between the orbits of Mercury and Pluto. The insights derived from these missions have been successfully applied to magnetospheric, astro-solar, and cosmic ray physics. This book is an overview of these insights, using magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flows as the framework for interpreting objects and processes observed in the interplanetary medium. Topics include various types of MHD shocks and interactions among them, tangential and rotational discontinuities, force-free field configurations, the formation of merged interaction regions associated with various types of flows, the destruction of flows, the growth of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability and formation of a heliospheric vortex street, the development of multifractal fluctuations on various scales, and the evolution of multifractal intermittent turbulence. Students and researchers in astrophysics will value the data from these missions, which provide confirmation of many theoretical models of the interstellar medium.