Plumpton & Ferraro (1955) considered the torsional oscillations of an infinitely conducting sphere in a uniform magnetic field. They showed that if the fluid and magnetic viscosity were assumed to be zero in the governing differential equations, then a continuous spectrum of eigenvalues could be obtained. This novel feature was clarified by Stewartson (1957) when he obtained the exact solution and showed that in the correct limit of a perfect conductor the eigen-values are discrete. Furthermore, in the limit of infinite conductivity the oscillations occur only on the axis of symmetry (figure 1).