Word: alfven
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...planets condensed from a single great cloud of gas. But they disagree, sometimes sharply, about the details of how it happened-and none of the theories have ever quite fitted together to give a satisfying solution to one of science's most baffling puzzles. Now, from Professor Hannes Alfven of Stockholm's Royal Institute of Technology, comes a promising explanation. To explain the solar system, Alfven says, other scientists have used plain old hydrodynamics (the behavior of fluids, including gases); if magnetohydrodynamics (the behavior of ionized gases in a magnetic field) is used instead, many things become clear...
...Alfven points out in Britain's New Scientist that ordinary hydrodynamics rules only in tiny crannies of the universe, such as the earth's ocean and the lower levels of the earth's atmosphere. The great bulk of the universe, including the stars and most of the matter between them, is made of ionized gases whose atoms have electric charges caused by the effects of heat or radiation. Unlike the earth's familiar water and air, most of whose atoms are electrically neutral, ionized gases are influenced by the magnetic fields that pervade space...