Abstract
The magnetosphere is clearly not in its “lowest energy” state and may change to a lower energy state by a change of magnetic field configuration or de-energization or loss of energetic particles. In this paper the classic technique for finding the force on a parallel plate capacitor, i.e. the rate of change of stored energy with distance, is applied to flux tubes in the magnetosphere. By balancing the rate at which energy becomes available by flux tubes motion with the energy associated with ionospheric drag, an equilibrium velocity is computed. It is concluded that small-scale internally generated electric fields in the magnetosphere are likely to be of the same order as the large-scale convective electric fields.
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