Abstract
WITH their admirable experimental technique, Babcock and Babcock have been able to measure certain very small line displacements in the Sun's spectrum, from which they deduce a general magnetic field of the order of −1 gauss. In order to draw this conclusion they use (although implicitly) two theories: (1) the theory of the Zeeman effect, connecting the line displacements with the magnetic field in a small homogeneous volume of gas; (2) the theory of magneto-turbulence in the photosphere, which, as Babcock's ‘point’ measurements include many thousand granulæ, is necessary for computing the average.
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Alfvén, H., Arkiv för fysik, 4, No. 24, 407 (1952); Tellus, 8, 1 (1956).
Babcock, H., Nature, 178, 533 (1956).
Lehnert, B., Proceedings of the Symposium on “Electromagnetic Phenomena in Cosmical Physics” in Stockholm, August 1956 (in the press).
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ALFVÉN, H., LEHNERT, B. The Sun's General Magnetic Field. Nature 178, 1339 (1956). https://doi.org/10.1038/1781339a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1781339a0
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