History of solar wind and space plasma physics revisited

TL;DR

This paper revisits the pioneering ideas of J.A. Broun from 1858, highlighting his early insights into solar wind, magnetic fields, and plasma physics, which prefigured modern space physics discoveries.

Contribution

It uncovers and emphasizes Broun's early contributions to space physics, demonstrating their relevance and rediscovery in the context of 20th-century space science.

Findings

Broun anticipated the nature of solar wind and geomagnetic storms.

He applied ionized gas experiments to space physics for the first time.

His hypotheses were later rediscovered during the Space Age.

Abstract

A paper published by Scottish geophysicist J.A. Broun in 1858 contained several pioneering and remarkable ideas in solar-terrestrial physics. He could anticipate more or less correctly the nature and origin of solar wind, solar magnetic fields, sunspot activity and geomagnetic storms in the middle of the 19th century. Broun applied the experimental results of the behavior of ionized gases in discharge tubes for the first time to Space Physics which may be considered as the beginning of the astrophysical plasma physics. In this context he attempted to explain the plasma interactions of solar wind with the comet tails and earth's magnetosphere. Most of the postulates or hypotheses put forward by Broun in 1858 and later in 1874 was rediscovered during the 20th century, after the advent of Space age.