The Earth is a planet with a dipolar magnetic field which is agitated by a magnetized plasma wind streaming from the Sun. The magnetic field shields the Earth’s surface from penetrating high energy solar wind particles, as well as interstellar cosmic rays. The magnetic dipole has reversed sign some hundreds of times over the last 400 million years. These polarity reversals correspond to drastic...

The interaction between the stellar wind, including the solar wind, and the interstellar medium is the subject of thorough investigation in the latest years. This is due to the possibility of comparison of the physical models for such interaction with the measurements performed by Voyager, Pioneer, and Ulysses spacecrafts. The presence of the magnetic field necessitates the solution of the magn...

Formation of interstellar clouds as a consequence of thermal instability is studied using twodimensional two-fluid magnetohydrodynamic simulations. We consider the situation of converging, supersonic flows of warm neutral medium in the interstellar medium that generate a shocked slab of thermally unstable gas in which clouds form. We found, as speculated in paper I, that in the shocked slab mag...