Distance from the identified discontinuities increases [86]. There is a characteristic core of elevated temperature that is about 100 000 km wide and a slower fall-off to distances beyond a correlation scale (approx. 106 km). Elevated temperature is not identical to heating, but it may be viewed tentatively as a proxy if heat conduction is not too great. One of the main outstanding problems for a plasma is of course that we do not know the dissipation function (or heat function) from first principles. This is revisited in the next section. A topic intimately related to both turbulence and intermittency is that of magnetic Larotrectinib dose reconnection [87?0]. In the solar wind, searches for magnetic reconnection have been less successful than in the magnetosphere, in part because the ordered large-scale magnetic field configuration prescribes the regions where the process is likely to be found. In the solar wind studies, instead of searching for the reconnection (diffusion) zones directly, more progress has been achieved based on identification of the Alfv ic exhaust jets that are emitted from an active reconnection site [91,92]. With availability of higher time resolution datasets, larger numbersof candidate reconnection events have been identified [92]. There has been some controversy as to whether suprathermal particles are associated with some of these events [93,94]. At the same time, if we accept that a turbulence cascade is active in the interplanetary medium, then it seems inescapable that magnetic reconnection in some form must be ongoing. Recently, a PVIbased method was implemented to search for solar wind reconnection sites. The method was tested in the context of MHD simulation [95], where (��)-Zanubrutinib custom synthesis current sheets and reconnection rates can be unambiguously identified by full analysis of the MHD fields. It was found that, for strong events with PVI >6 or 7, it was extremely likely that these would also be located at reconnecting current sheets. In application to the solar wind, the identification of a PVI event with a reconnection site cannot be done in the same way as in the simulations. Instead, a successful identification was defined to be a close coincidence in time of the PVI event with a reconnection event obtained using the Alfv ic exhaust identification strategy. In analogy to the test case, it was found that the data identified by large PVI thresholds was up to 10 000 times more likely to be a reconnection event than a randomly selected point. On the other hand, 90 or more of the large PVI events are not identified exhausts. What is unknown at this time is whether some fraction of these might also be identified as in or near reconnection sites if more inclusive criteria are employed, such as identification of features of the reconnection zone itself instead of just exhausts. From a turbulence perspective, we do expect numerous reconnection sites in the solar wind, but, as seen in simulations, even in two dimensions [89] their features may be complex and rather different in many cases from steady-state laminar Sweet arker conditions [96]. This section has attempted a quick review of current progress in understanding the effects of intermittency in the solar wind. It is instructive to conclude by recalling that 35 years ago a prevailing view of the `turbulence’ in the solar wind was that it was a fossil of activity that took place in the lower corona. In this view the fluctuations are described as non-interacting Alfv waves along with an adm.Distance from the identified discontinuities increases [86]. There is a characteristic core of elevated temperature that is about 100 000 km wide and a slower fall-off to distances beyond a correlation scale (approx. 106 km). Elevated temperature is not identical to heating, but it may be viewed tentatively as a proxy if heat conduction is not too great. One of the main outstanding problems for a plasma is of course that we do not know the dissipation function (or heat function) from first principles. This is revisited in the next section. A topic intimately related to both turbulence and intermittency is that of magnetic reconnection [87?0]. In the solar wind, searches for magnetic reconnection have been less successful than in the magnetosphere, in part because the ordered large-scale magnetic field configuration prescribes the regions where the process is likely to be found. In the solar wind studies, instead of searching for the reconnection (diffusion) zones directly, more progress has been achieved based on identification of the Alfv ic exhaust jets that are emitted from an active reconnection site [91,92]. With availability of higher time resolution datasets, larger numbersof candidate reconnection events have been identified [92]. There has been some controversy as to whether suprathermal particles are associated with some of these events [93,94]. At the same time, if we accept that a turbulence cascade is active in the interplanetary medium, then it seems inescapable that magnetic reconnection in some form must be ongoing. Recently, a PVIbased method was implemented to search for solar wind reconnection sites. The method was tested in the context of MHD simulation [95], where current sheets and reconnection rates can be unambiguously identified by full analysis of the MHD fields. It was found that, for strong events with PVI >6 or 7, it was extremely likely that these would also be located at reconnecting current sheets. In application to the solar wind, the identification of a PVI event with a reconnection site cannot be done in the same way as in the simulations. Instead, a successful identification was defined to be a close coincidence in time of the PVI event with a reconnection event obtained using the Alfv ic exhaust identification strategy. In analogy to the test case, it was found that the data identified by large PVI thresholds was up to 10 000 times more likely to be a reconnection event than a randomly selected point. On the other hand, 90 or more of the large PVI events are not identified exhausts. What is unknown at this time is whether some fraction of these might also be identified as in or near reconnection sites if more inclusive criteria are employed, such as identification of features of the reconnection zone itself instead of just exhausts. From a turbulence perspective, we do expect numerous reconnection sites in the solar wind, but, as seen in simulations, even in two dimensions [89] their features may be complex and rather different in many cases from steady-state laminar Sweet arker conditions [96]. This section has attempted a quick review of current progress in understanding the effects of intermittency in the solar wind. It is instructive to conclude by recalling that 35 years ago a prevailing view of the `turbulence’ in the solar wind was that it was a fossil of activity that took place in the lower corona. In this view the fluctuations are described as non-interacting Alfv waves along with an adm.