Talk:Magnetic reconnection

message: Because the previous talk page had become host to protracted discussions during and prior to an edit war and had not been edited in about nine months, it has been archived.  My hope is that this will help the discussion to focus again on how to improve this article. Spacehippy (talk) 00:16, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Creation of Archive

message: Hi, at the moment the last paragraph in the introduction finishes with: There are two competing theories to explain the discrepancy. One posits that the electromagnetic turbulence in the boundary layer is sufficiently strong to scatter electrons, raising the plasma's local resistivity. This would allow the magnetic flux to diffuse faster.
I was just wondering, what would the other competing theory be? Thanks  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.49.162.11 (talk) 21:27, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  The other proposed theory 

message: Pretty much anyone who is studying this topic will be doing so in cgs units. I am wondering if it wiki policy work in SI for all science pages or if there is some other reason for the SI units on this page. Gunblader928 (talk) 05:07, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: SI is the international norm, and is most widely used in science. bobrayner (talk) 23:52, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: everyone in this community uses CGS, experimentalists, theoreticians and numerical people alike. If there is no strict policy it would benefit readers to have everything in CGS.  Justinh2002 (talk) 06:17, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: The statement that everyone uses CGS is false, if only because it makes it sound like there is only one CGS system. This is not true: in there is an electrostatic CGS system, an electromagnetic CGS system, the Gaussian CGS system, and a CGS Lorentz-Heaviside system, and others. Of these the Gaussian is the most frequently used but most users are not aware of the distinctions. This has the potential to cause error and confusion with different unit names, sizes, and definitions in terms of the base units and different coefficients for the major equations of electromagnetism. This is one of the great advantages of SI units (the successor to MKS and very similar to MKS) which is coherent and standardised.  If one uses dimensional analysis to any great extent, one quickly realises the great advantages of SI over CGS which it replaced for very good reasons.  It is true that the various forms of CGS are still used in certain disciplines but they really should not be: I always teach undergraduate students to ensure that they put everything in SI units as that ensures that their answer is in the relevant SI units and avoids several pitfalls, especially in electromagnetism. MessageInABottle 08:00, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is there a reason this is in MKSA instead of CGS? 

message: A paper was published today in the journal Science which describes observations made by NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS). That mission made direct measurements of electron demagnetization and acceleration during reconnections along the sunward boundary of Earth’s magnetosphere where the magnetic field between the Sun and Earth reconnects with the terrestrial magnetic field. The measurements were made with very high temporal resolution. Here is a link to the article:  Sparkie82 (t•c)  11:17, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Research Article: Electron-scale measurements of magnetic reconnection in space 

message: Hey folks,
I am a first-year Physics Ph.D. student, and I am about halfway through a basic plasma class. I feel like I am the target audience for this article. Nonetheless, this article is impossible to understand. I have a basic understanding of mechanics, electrodynamics, and magnetohydrodynamics. Nonetheless, this article is at too high of a level to understand very well.
128.235.93.40 (talk) 18:13, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Difficult to understand 

message: I think some information on this study should be added to the article. It's currently featured in 2021 in science like so:
Astrophysicists report that energy extraction – with high efficiency – from rotating black holes with a high spin via reconnection of magnetic field lines of an externally supplied magnetic field that accelerates escaping plasma particles is possible. Advanced civilizations may be capable of doing so.
and:
Astrophysicists report a new way for energy extraction from rotating black holes that have a high spin. Reconnection of magnetic field lines of an externally supplied magnetic field would accelerate plasma particles escaping the black hole. Advanced civilizations may be capable of harnessing energy this way with high efficiency. This may be relevant to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the accuracy of the Kardashev scale.
I don't think it would fit into any of the article's existing sections so a new section should probably be added.
--Prototyperspective (talk) 18:29, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please update with: "Magnetic reconnection as a mechanism for energy extraction from rotating black holes" 

message: Magnetic reconnection (MC) is a convenient fiction. Perhaps the editors are too close to the physics to realize that the average reader doesn't know that simple fact. It should be explained that field lines are abstractions just like contour lines on a topological map (of land) are. "Explaining" MC as the breakdown of "ideal-magnetohydrodynamics" is as helpful as explaining a phonon as a type of quasiparticle. It explains nothing (unless the reader is already well versed in the subject). The article seems to have been written to be INTENTIONALLY vague. I learn that MC can be slow (how slow? no idea, millions of years? dozens of nanoseconds, no idea) or fast (how fast? again, no idea). I also read that regions of large magnetic shear are small...(how small? no idea - we're talking about the Sun and the solar system so could be femtometers or megameters, make sure to not explain what's meant!). It would be nice to reduce the process to the motion of real stuff. Like plasma is real, electrons are real, and so are their electrical and magnetic fields (for certain values of real), but field lines? not so much. (As far as I know, iron dust aside, you can't measure field lines like you can measure field strength, right?). Anyway, let me finish by stating that Alfven himself advised against use of the concept. To be clear, I'm not arguing that it shouldn't be invoked, but am arguing that it has some very significant problems and it's easy to find criticism of it online, and they should be discussed!174.130.71.156 (talk) 08:54, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flawed