MM cites evidence that MM has been misrepresenting Alfvén
From Alfven's perspective that was the E component, particularly in light (atmospheric) plasmas. Here's a link to the first few chapters of Alfven's book by the way, along with a link to his opinions on this topic.
http://books.google.com/books?id=Zj...onepage&q=Hannes Alfven Cosmic Plasma&f=false
http://www.scribd.com/doc/14160914/...-Field-Lines-and-Field-Line-Reconnection-1976
Double Layers
in Astrophysics
Edited by
Alton C. Williams and Tauna W. Moorehead
NASA George C. Marshall Space Flight Center
Marshall Space Flight Center, Alabama
Proceedings of a workshop sponsored by
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
Washington, D.C., and the Universities Space Research
Association, Washington, D.C., and held at
George C. Marshall Space Right Center
Huntsville, Alabama
March 17-19, 1986
Thank you. That last citation was for Alfvén's keynote address, which kicked off a workshop he and four others had organized. The full proceedings of that workshop are available online at
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19870013880_1987013880.pdf
Note that the captions for the first three figures are permuted.
In section III.A. of his keynote address, Alfvén admits his share of the blame for introducing and promoting the "frozen-in" simplification, and admits that this simplification leads to a definition of "magnetic field line" that is at odds with Maxwell's equations. Alfvén also writes:
Alfvén said:
If the current system which produced the field changes, the magnetic field changes and field lines can merge or reconnect.
Alfvén followed that sentence with several technical observations that could easily be misinterpreted by someone who is unfamiliar with Maxwell's equations or with the mathematics of time-varying vector fields. His real point, however, is that he had come to believe that his "frozen-in" simplification had become an impediment to progress.
In section III.B., which
Michael Mozina quoted in its entirety, Alfvén explains that his "frozen-in" simplification leads to absurd results when magnetic reconnection is modelled by "merging" of frozen-in magnetic field lines. My reading of that section is that Alfvén felt guilty about his role in promoting the "frozen-in" model, was dismayed by its continuing popularity, and used this keynote address as an opportunity to denounce the textbooks and papers that had attempted to model magnetic reconnection using the broken model that Alfvén had formerly promoted.
That interpretation is supported by the other paper to which
Michael Mozina has drawn our attention. Its abstract:
Alfvén said:
It is shown that `frozen-in magnetic field lines' and `magnetic field-line reconnection' are unnecessary and often misleading concepts.
That may sound like a rejection of magnetic reconnection, but it is only a rejection of the broken concept of magnetic reconnection that is based on the misleadingly simplifying notion of frozen-in magnetic field lines. It is not a rejection of magnetic reconnection with respect to the magnetic field lines of Maxwell's equations. You can see how someone who doesn't understand Maxwell's equations might have been misled by that abstract.
Consider the first sentence of section 2:
Alfvén said:
Much of the discussion of magnetospheric theories is centered on the stationary state, and we shall confine ourselves to this (Figure 1).
If you understand Maxwell's equations, you know that magnetic reconnection cannot occur within a stationary state. Alfvén understood that:
Alfvén said:
In the stationary state we consider, both the electric and the magnetic fields are static. We can depict the magnetic field by drawing the magnetic field lines (Figure 1), but it should be observed that a magnetic field line has the Maxwellian meaning. It is a line which everywhere has the direction of the magnetic field. To ask whether a field line `moves' or not has no sense....
Note that Alfvén has taken the trouble to say quite explicitly that he is now talking about Maxwellian field lines, not the counter-Maxwellian field lines he had condemned in his keynote address. You can see how someone who doesn't understand the mathematics could misinterpret such passages as a claim that magnetic reconnection cannot ever occur.
These last few quotations are from
Hannes Alfvén. On frozen-in field lines and field-line reconnection.
Journal of Geophysical Research 81(22), August 1, 1976, pages 4019ff.
