Description

This book presents a brief review of the main re- sults obtained in two new branches of plasma physics that have developed rapidly in the last decade following the launching of artificial satellites. The aim has been to illuminate results that have a certain completeness and permanent nature and will retain their significance and be used in further investigations. A further aim has been, as far as possible, to acquaint the reader with the most recent achievements in these interesting branches of modern science. The first chapter of the book contains some data, theoretical results, and formulas that will be used to consider different types of wave phenomena that occur in the ionosphere, magnetosphere, and the solar wind. The second chapter contains experimental and theoretical re- sults obtained from the study of the flow of plasmas around bodies. Here, theory predominates over experiment, which reflects the state of development of these inves- tigations. The results of the second chapter will un- doubtedly retain their significance in the future. The writing of the third chapter presented the most difficult problem. The literature is being continuously augmented with the results of investigations of wave processes that occur in the plasma that is nearest to the Earth -- re- gions of the ionosphere at an altitude of 200-300 km and more -- out to distances from the Earth of millions of kilometers -- in the solar wind. We shall refer to all this region of plasma as the near-Earth plasma.