Using a new interpretation of data from a cheap low-altitude satellite, Michael Lock-wood of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in the UK and collaborators have derived quantitative information about dynamical processes taking place in the Earth's magnetopause, Their results address controversial issues about how the Earth interacts with the solar wind, the stream of charged plasma particles that flows outwards from the Sun (M Lock-wood a al. 1994 Geophys, Res. Lett. 21 2757), The rnagnetopause forms the boundary between the solar wind and the Earth's magnetosphere, the region where o the Earth's magnetic field controls: the motion of the solar wind.
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