Talk:Magnetopause

Magnetic moment definition in section "Estimating the standoff distance to the magnetopause"

Referring to the text: "Since the dipole magnetic field strength varies with distance as $1/r^{3}$ the magnetic field strength can be written as $B(r)=B_{0}/r^{3}$, where $B_{0}$ is the planet's magnetic moment, expressed in $[T\cdot m^{3}]$.

The units of $[T\cdot m^{3}]$ do not correspond to those for a dipole magnetic moment, which has units of $[Am^{2}]$ or [N m/T].

Chapter 17 of http://orca.phys.uvic.ca/~tatum/elmag/em17.pdf states that the units of [T\cdot m^{3}] "... often seen for “magnetic moment” is not dimensionally correct for magnetic moment..."

Also, the use of B(r) for magnetic field strength and use of $B_{0}$ for magnetic moment is confusing, $\mathbf {m}$ should be used instead to be consistent with Wikipedia page magnetic moment.

Alternative text would be "Since the Magnetic dipole field strength varies with distance as $1/r^{3}$ the magnetic field strength facing the sun (i.e., $\theta =0$) can be written as

$B(r)={\frac {\mu _{0}\mathbf {m} }{4\pi r^{3}}}$, 

where $\mathbf {m}$ is the planet's magnetic moment, expressed in $[Am^{2}]$."

In the subsequent equations, replace $B_{0}$ with ${\frac {\mu _{0}\mathbf {m} }{4\pi }}$.

I see that this is the first talk item for this page. If I don't see a response in a week or so, I will edit as outlined above to make this correction and align this text with magnetic moment. I will also add the citation mentioned above.

Would also like a citation for Note 1 for the 4x factor. Dmcdysan (talk) 01:24, 28 June 2022 (UTC)