What is the kinematic viscosity and plasma resistivity of the Sun?

Gulp.....wouldn't you rather know how big a prominence is...or a sunspot?

Well...OK.

According to Einar Tandberg-Hanssen and A. Gordon Emslie's book The Physics of solar flares published by Cambridge University press in 1988, on page 74 we electrical conductivity of a perfectly ionized gas with no magnetic fields is given by:

                              3/2
                   8         T
sigma =   2.37 x 10     ------------
                          Z ln G

where
                3          3  3         1/2
        G =   ------   (  k  T /(pi N) )
                    3
               2 Z e
                                       -1
and the unit of conductivity is seconds

The conductivity, sigma, is just 1/resistivity. To evaluate the above, first determine the electron density in the sun, Ne, then look up the temperature,T, and from an average Z of 1.0, compute G. Plug this into the first formula to get sigma, then take the reciprocal to get the resistivity. From another reference book: Peter Fox and Ira Bernstein "The Internal Solar Angular velocity" published by Reidel and COmpany in 1987 and edited by B. Durney and S. Sofia, on page 215 they state that the 'isotropic milecular electrical conductivity, sigma, equals 9 x 10^6 T^(3/2) sec^(-1) and they say it is a function only of radius ( because the temperature and electron density from the top two formulae depend only on distance from the center) and that sigma varies from 10^19 sec^(-1) near the core, to 5 x 10^(12) sec^(-1) near the surface.

I do not have any good references for kinematic viscosity because it is anisotropic. Along the solar magnetic field it is lower than perpendicular to the magnetic field.


Copyright 1997 Dr. Sten Odenwald
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