ENGINEERING-PHYSICS SPACE PLASMA SEMINAR

Dr. Jerry Goldstein, Staff Scientist at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Adjoint Professor of Physics at UTSA. Ph.D at Dartmouth College

May 30, 2017
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Location
JACKSON CONFERENCE ROOM - CUMMINGS 232
Sponsored by
Thayer School of Engineering
Audience
Public
More information
Ellen Wirta
Title: Plasmaspheric Refilling and Erosion: Outstanding Questions
 
Abstract: The plasmasphere is the region of cold (below 10 eV),
dense (up to 10,000 cm-3) plasma that surrounds the Earth and
extends several Earth radii into space. It composes the majority of
the terrestrial magnetosphere's inertia, and thereby controls major
aspects of time-dependent geospace plasma behavior. Despite a half
century of study since its discovery there remain major unsolved
puzzles about the plasmasphere and its boundary layer, the plasmapause. These questions about
core plasma can be distilled into 2 major ones: (1) How is this plasma populated from the
ionosphere, and (2) How is it removed and redistributed during geomagnetic disturbances?
This seminar surveys several outstanding questions about refilling and erosion that can be
answered using observations from future multispectral (30.4 nm and 83.4 nm) EUV imagers.
These questions include: (1A) How does the rate of refilling depend on location, geomagnetic
activity, season, and solar cycle? (1B) Is refilling a two-stage process? (1C) What causes the
dense oxygen ion torus? (2A) How does convection depend on location, time, and activity?
(2B) What role does interchange play in erosion? For each question, we review what is not
known, and how it can be explored with imaging data.
 
Biography: Dr. Jerry Goldstein is a Staff Scientist at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI),
and an Adjoint Professor of Physics at UTSA. Goldstein got his Ph.D at Dartmouth College,
where he studied the theory of cavity resonances of the Earth’s magnetosphere, under the
guidance of Mary Hudson. At SwRI (since 2003), Dr. Goldstein specializes in the dynamics of
inner magnetospheres using global imaging observations from missions such as IMAGE and
TWINS, complemented by theory and simulation. Dr. Goldstein is the Science Operations
Center lead (2003-present) for the TWINS mission. He is a Fellow of the AGU and received the
James B. Macelwane medal in 2006. He has served on multiple NASA and NSF review panels
including the Solar-Wind-Magnetosphere interaction panel for the Decadal Survey and as
Associate Editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research. Dr. Goldstein is author or co-author of
~100 published papers, with over 1700 citations and an h index of 23.
Location
JACKSON CONFERENCE ROOM - CUMMINGS 232
Sponsored by
Thayer School of Engineering
Audience
Public
More information
Ellen Wirta