What is a solar wind?

solar wind is a stream of charged particles flowing from the sun or any star in all directions. The solar wind is mostly made up of free protons and electrons (plasma) with energy about 1 kev (kiloelectron-volt). This quite energetic, but solar wind is usually harmless due to its low density. The solar wind extends out of about 100 AU (astronomical units, far-sun distances), about three times from the Sun than in the orbit of the Neptune, at this point it collides with an interstellar medium. The area with dominant sun wind is known as the heliosphere.

It is not entirely known how the solar wind escapes the sun and travels outwards. This is partly due to the extremely high corona temperature, the highest layer of solar atmosphere, which is between 1 and 3 million Kelvin (1 and 3 million Celsius, 1.8 and 5.4 million Fahrenheit) and reaches occasional maximum 10 million Kelvin. The high temperature of Corona is an unsooperated question in the physics itself, but the speed of the solar wind as it is released from the sunNCE - between 400 and 700 km/s - is another mystery. Although, given the high corona temperature, these particles must get some other kinetic energy from anywhere to escape the sun at the speed they do. Magnetic fields generated by free electrons can contribute to accelerating the protons from the sun.

solar wind is a source of various phenomena visible from the ground, including aurorae (northern lights and southern lights), geomagnetic storms, the most serious of which can damage energy grids and endanger astronauts and plasma tails of the comet. The sun radiates about 6.7 billion tons of solar winds per hour, which sounds like a lot, but when spreading over the huge area of ​​space, it happens virtually nothing. The ground with the solar wind is ejed only every 150 million years and the sun has lost only 0.01% of its weight aged 4.57 billion years. Other stars, especially Wolf-Rayet stars, lose mn over timeOhem more of his mass for the solar wind. While the sun would require 50 trillion years to throw away all the mass through the solar wind, the star Wolf-Rayet requires only about 100,000.

Solar wind is a primary phenomenon in space for long distance, but not forever. The influence of the solar wind begins to prevent the end of the end, about 75 Au from the Sun, where the solar wind speed decreases from supersonic to subsonic. Space Probe Voyager 1 achieved shock for ending on 23.-24. May 2005. Data sent back from its sensors gave scientists a better idea of ​​how dynamics change when solar wind is not a primary influence on the local space environment.