Universal processes: “laws” of space weather

Heliophysics is concerned with laws that give rise to structures and processes that occur in magnetized plasmas and in neutral environments in the local cosmos, both temporal (weather-like) and persistent (climate-like). These laws systematize the results of half a century of exploring space that followed centuries of ground-based observations. During this time spacecraft have imaged the Sun over many wavelengths and resolutions. They have visited every planet, all major satellites and many minor ones, and a selection of comets and asteroids. Beyond this they have traversed the expanse of the heliosphere itself. Out of the vast store of data so accumulated, the laws and principles of heliophysics are emerging to describe structures that are natural to magnetized plasmas and neutrals in cosmic settings and to specify principles that make the heliosphere a realm of numerous, original dynamical modes.

By “the laws of heliophysics” we are not here referring to a subset of the laws of physics that apply to all things everywhere. A discipline that needs to refer back to the fundamental laws of physics to explain its phenomena would be totally derivative, having no synthesizing laws of its own, no regularities peculiar to it, no inherent principles with explanatory power sufficient to link its own distinctive phenomena; in short, no paradigms. To help fix this idea, we list here a few familiar examples from other fields of discipline-specific general laws or principles: chemistry – the periodic table, valence, Le Chatelier–Braun principle; biology – evolution, double helix; geology – “deep time”, plate tectonics; astronomy – Kepler's laws, Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, expanding universe; meteorology – Hadley cell, baroclinic instability.