Metastability of current sheets

Academy of Sciences (RAS), was held on 26 May 2010 at the conference hall of the Lebedev Physical Institute, RAS. The session was devoted to the 85th birthday of S I Syrovatskii. The program announced on the web page of the RAS Physical Sciences Division (www.gpad.ac.ru) contained the following reports: (1) Zelenyi L M (Space Research Institute, RAS, Moscow) ``Current sheets and reconnection in the geomagnetic tail''; (2) Frank A G (Prokhorov General Physics Institute, RAS, Moscow) ``Dynamics of current sheets as the cause of flare events in magnetized plasmas''; (3) Kuznetsov V D (Pushkov Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, the Ionosphere, and Radio Wave Propagation, RAS, Troitsk, Moscow region) ``Space research on the Sun''; (4) Somov B V (Shternberg Astronomical Institute, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow) ``Strong shock waves and extreme plasma states''; (5)Zybin K P (Lebedev Physical Institute, RAS,Moscow) ``Structure functions for developed turbulence''; (6) Ptuskin V S (Pushkov Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, the Ionosphere, and Radio Wave Propagation, RAS, Troitsk, Moscow region) ``The origin of cosmic rays.'' Papers based on reports 1±4 and 6 are published in what follows.