Prologue
Abstract
The place that we call home, the surface of the planet Earth, presents us with an environment in which temperatures range over perhaps 80 kelvins from the cool arctic regions or mountain tops to the hottest deserts or jungles. We are composed largely of liquid water with a density of 1 gram per cubic centimeter; we walk on solid rock with a density that is about five times higher than this and breathe a gas with a density that is 1000 times lower. These conditions are such that chemical reactions and phase transitions between solids, liquids, and gases are the processes that dominate our everyday experience.
- Publication:
-
Heliophysics: Plasma Physics of the Local Cosmos
- Pub Date:
- August 2009
- Bibcode:
- 2009hppl.book....1S