William Coles (University of California, San Diego)

Fine Structure in the Ionized Interstellar Medium -- William Coles Colloquium

Abstract

The IISM has been extensively studied by various imaging techniques at relatively large scales (pc), and by radio scattering observations at relatively small scales (Mm). As observers at both ends of the spectrum push their techniques they have come to overlap (or at least to touch) in the AU scale range. Radio observers have, for decades, analyzed their observations successfully using a model of nearly-incompressible, homogeneous, isotropic turbulence with a Kolmogorov spectral exponent (-11/3). Recent observations are beginning to cast doubt on all of these assumptions, indeed on the basic character of the turbulence in the IISM.