  The spin-down power of a pulsar is thought to be carried away in an MHD wind
in which, at least close to the star, the energy transport is dominated by
Poynting flux. The pulsar drives a low-frequency wave in this wind, consisting
of stripes of toroidal magnetic field of alternating polarity, propagating in a
region around the equatorial plane. The current implied by this configuration
falls off more slowly with radius than the number of charged particles
available to carry it, so that the MHD picture must, at some point, fail.
Recently, magnetic reconnection in such a structure has been shown to
accelerate the wind significantly. This reduces the magnetic field in the
comoving frame and, consequently, the required current, enabling the solution
to extend to much larger radius. This scenario is discussed and, for the Crab
Nebula, the range of validity of the MHD solution is compared with the radius
at which the flow appears to terminate. For sufficiently high particle
densities, it is shown that a low frequency entropy wave can propagate out to
the termination point. In this case, the "termination shock" itself must be
responsible for dissipating the wave.
