Termination Shock Surfing

Voyager Observations of the heliospheric termination shock (TS) are presented along with a brief discussion of the current and past state of our knowledge of the heliospheric boundary region formed by the interaction of the Sun's solar wind with the local interstellar medium. Voyager 2 observations of the TS are used to construct a model which indicates that shock surfing can account for the 'missing' energy in the solar wind plasma downstream of the TS. (Time permitting) I will discuss our new idea for using the conservation laws for macroscopic conducting fluids (i.e. the conservation laws underlying MHD) to include the back-reaction of the shock surfing mechanism on the electromagnetic fields in a quasi-self-consistent fashion.

Ross Burrows

UAHuntsville