The Field of Solar Physics Review and Recommendations for Ground-Based Solar Research (1989) / Chapter Skim
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4. Institutional Issues and Policy Recommendations
4. Institutional Issues and Policy Recommendations
Pages 42-52
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From page 42... ...
X-ray and gamma-ray observations involve both balloon-borne and orbiting instruments, with implications for high-energy astrophysics, particle acceleration, cosmic abundances of the elements, and the physics of solar and stellar activity. Ultraviolet observations carried out from space affect solar and stellar physics, as well as magnetospheric and ionospheric physics and atmospheric physics and chemistry.
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From page 43... ...
This separation of research support reflects the great diversity of the solar physics enterprise, which spans an enormous range of physics, from the detailed plasma physics and hydrodynamics of the outer solar atmosphere and solar wind to the general behavior of the Sun as a star. However, since no single entity within NSF has responsibility for managing this overall research program, there is no coherent direction to the overall NSF solar program, strategic planning is lacking, and coordination and collaborative planning take place on an ad hoc and intermittent basis.
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From page 44... ...
Finally, because solar physics is only a part of the overall oversight responsibility of the grants and centers programs of the Atmospheric Sciences, Polar Programs, and Astronomical Sciences Divisions, it is organizationally difficult, if not impossible, to maintain an appropriate balance between the research grants, support for the national centers and observatories, and scientific justification for the facilities portions of the overall NSF solar physics effort. This imbalance can lead to a distorted perception of the size and vigor of the client scientific community.
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From page 45... ...
. This committee sees the choice of appropriate directorate as properly an NSF decision; however, no matter which directorate is ultimately decided on, the recommended solar physics division or section if it is not entitled as a division should have budgetary authority and control comparable to those of a division.
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From page 46... ...
Strengthen the Experimental Base of Universities and Encourage Interaction Between National Centers and Universities The deficiencies in the research community engendered by the lack of strong experimental or observational efforts at universities will have serious consequences for the future conduct of solar research in the United States. Whereas a growing number of universities provide, or are actively planning to provide, major nocturnal astronomical telescope facilities that in toto exceed significantly the power of those at the NSF-supported national centers, no corresponding development of solar instrumentation is taking place at universities.
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From page 47... ...
sponsoring an active visiting scientist program for the benefit of university teaching and research faculty. The partnership will be real and effective when all centers apply an appropriate amount of their annual solar physics research budgets to the above programs (the historical level of such support at one of NSF's solar research centers has been an approximate level of about 10 percent)
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From page 48... ...
First, in contrast to the success of the large-scale, national initiatives at the proposal stage, such as the GONG project, which involves substantial participation of the solar community, smaller-scale, universitybased initiatives have fared poorly. Indeed, virtually no funds from the Astronomical Sciences Division's instrumentation program are supporting efforts at universities to develop solar instruments; this is one of the elements contributing to the difficulties of training young experimentalists at .
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From page 49... ...
The complete neutrino energy spectrum of the Sun would provide especially powerful quantitative constraints on the conditions in the central core, as an important part of determining conditions in the solar interior; measurement of the FIB neutrino properties is particularly important in this regard. While these experiments are being planned and implemented, the suggestion from the 37C1 neutrino detector, that the neutrino flux from the Sun varies with the magnetic cycle, makes it necessary for us to continue that experiment for another decade-to determine, if possible, the reality of the effect and to continue support for the Kamiokande II experiment
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From page 50... ...
Heltosezsmology projects. The other partner in the direct probing of the solar interior is the new field of helioseismology, which, by inverting the observed frequency spectrum of global modes of oscillations, can be used to constrain the variation of temperature, molecular weight, and gas density as a function of depth below the surface.
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From page 51... ...
NSF should vigorously support efforts to replace the National Solar Observatory facilities with a large-aperture solar telescope and should do so at tine' best possible site, possibly in collaboration with European scientists and others. In particular, the committee most strongly recommends that NSF support activities leading to the definition and siting of this new telescope system.
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From page 52... ...
Thus aside from posing such questions of fundamental physics as how high-energy particles are accelerated, these transients also challenge our abilities to predict them and their terrestrial effects. With the imminence of the next solar maximum, the current plans of NSF to support related experimental, observational, and theoretical studies are to be applauded.
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