Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Heliospheric Response To Different Possible Interstellar Environments, Hans-Reinhard Muller, Priscilla C. Frisch, Vladimir Florinski, Gary P. Zank

Dartmouth Scholarship

At present, the heliosphere is embedded in a warm, low-density interstellar cloud that belongs to a cloud system flowing through the local standard of rest with a velocity near ~18 km s^-1. The velocity structure of the nearest interstellar material (ISM), combined with theoretical models of the local interstellar cloud (LIC), suggest that the Sun passes through cloudlets on timescales of ≤10³-10⁴ yr, so the heliosphere has been, and will be, exposed to different interstellar environments over time. By means of a multifluid model that treats plasma and neutral hydrogen self-consistently, the interaction of the …