William forwarded this back in October 2016 – a link to a book at www.mikamar.biz/book-info/tes-a.htm#Author … which provides some history concerning Hannes Alfven, and his book, 'Cosmic Plasma' – published in 1981 but largely ignored by astrophysicists. However, the electric universe people have gone back to basics – resurrecting some of Alfven's ideas (and science).Hannes Alfven, and his book, 'Cosmic Plasma' – published in 1981 but largely ignored by astrophysicists. However, the electric universe people have gone back to basics – resurrecting some of Alfven's ideas (and science).
At https://phys.org/print414257274.html … there is another interesting story – the first direct exploration of magnetic fields in the upper solar atmosphere. They have done this by observing the polarisation of ultraviolet light emitted by the Sun using data from the CLASP sounding rocket experiment during a 5 minute flight in September 2015. The data shows the structures of the solar chromosphere and the transition region – which are more complicated that expected.
… by analysing light from the Sun astronomers can determine how it has been emitted and scattered in the solar atmosphere. As magnetic fields are thought to play an important role in solar activity many precise measurements have been made of the magnetic field at the solar surface (the photosphere) – but not many until now have measured the magnetic field in the solar atmosphere, well above the surface.