What is a solar wind?exactly...?
Question:
Answer:
It's the small electrically charged particles from the sun travelling at high speeds away from the sun. It's ejected from the corona of the sun, and can most directly be observed by looking at comets (their tails travel in the same direction as the solar wind), and the Earth's aurora (the charged particles enter the Earth's magnetosphere and are collected around the magnetic poles, and interaction with the atmosphere results in the aurora).
The sun emits particles at high speed, which proceed outward, causing effects such as the aurora borealis and aurora australis. The mechanism apparently involves interactions of charged particles with magnetic fields on the sun, and increases when there are sunspots (which are highly magnetic). The particles are mostly hydrogen ions, with some helium and a smattering of heavier elements.
The solar wind is a stream of charged particles (i.e., a plasma) which are ejected from the upper atmosphere of the sun. It consists mostly of high-energy electrons and protons (about 1 keV) that are able to escape the sun's gravity in part because of the high temperature of the corona and the high kinetic energy particles gain through a process that is not well understood at this time.
More Questions & Answers...