Scope

Space Physics is a fairly young branch of Physics. Originating about half a century ago, with the advent of rocket and spacecraft technology enabling observations above the atmosphere in situ Earth's close environment, initially as an exploratory geophysical activity. It has since matured into its own unique and active field of basic physics, from experimental to pure theory, and grows with the development of each new spacecraft-borne technology. Space Physics encompasses the entire region from the upper atmosphere (~80 km altitude) out to the bounds of the heliosphere (at ~100-150 astronomical units), the region dominated in some ways by the Sun. This space is filled with dilute, mostly ionized matter of variable origins, composition and properties. The Sun provides the main material in the form of the solar wind, but other solar system objects contribute: the atmospheres of planets, comets, and asteroids as well as interstellar gas, which surrounds the heliosphere and may leak in into it, and cosmic rays that diffuse across the heliosphere. This matter is mostly in the plasma state and is affected by magnetic fields of various origins and by the diffusive cosmic ray flow. Its properties vary with spatial location and time, depending on solar activity, contributions from planetary atmospheres, and sources of magnetic fields - most dominantly the Sun and magnetized planets. Critically, two of the important properties of the matter in space concern its high temperature and low density, which both distinguish it from laboratory plasmas, rendering it free of binary inter-particle collisions. Thus entirely new physical processes have been discovered for which practically no laboratory counterparts exist. This is of utmost interest for the understanding of similar yet inaccessible processes in remote astrophysical systems. The Specialty Space Physics welcomes the submission of original observational, theoretical, simulational and experimental studies that provide novel insights into the various processes taking place in the fully, as well as partially, ionized space matter: the solar wind, processes in the heliosphere and at the heliospheric boundaries, interaction of the solar wind with the surrounding interstellar medium, cosmic rays, interaction with planetary magnetic fields, interplanetary processes, planetary magnetospheres, planetary ionospheres, space weather, cometary interactions with the solar wind and magnetospheres as well as the generation of radiation. It also encourages submissions dealing with the more astrophysically oriented space physics including particle acceleration in magnetized plasmas, including processes in relativistic plasmas, relativistic shocks, relativistic reconnection, and the generation of radiation which, in many cases, is the only source of information obtained from remote objects while being directly comparable with in situ observable processes in space.

Submission

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