Sometimes, intense amounts of electromagnetic energy are released from the Sun in the form of solar wind, or flares. The Earth is protected from solar wind — essentially an extremely hot gas — by its magnetic field, which stretches out into space. The particles of solar winds are known to affect satellites and even cause power blackouts on Earth. Scientists are still investigating the possible long-term effects of this activity on the Earth’s climate.
Mt. Washington, New Hampshire is the windiest location in the United States, with an average wind speed of 35 mph. At this speed, trees start to sway and it becomes difficult to walk. Barrow Island, Australia has the highest wind speed ever recorded on Earth at 253 mph. This is strong enough to blow the roofs off of most buildings and uproot trees and shrubs. That is a pretty strong wind. But this is a drop in the bucket compared to the wind on the Sun.
Solar wind is more than 4000 times as strong as the wind speed recorded on Barrow Island. Additionally, it reaches temperatures of around 1 million degrees Celsius, almost 15,000 times the hottest recorded temperature on Earth.
The solar wind refers to the steady stream of highly charged particles that continually blow off the Sun in all directions. It is caused by the solar corona expanding into space. The corona is the outer atmosphere of the Sun. You can see it as a glowing halo around the Sun during a solar eclipse.
The corona is so hot that the Sun’s gravity cannot hold it in. Instead, it streams off the Sun as protons and electrons shooting through space at speeds of around 400 km/s (about 1 million miles per hour). At that speed, you could travel from New York to Los Angeles in 10 seconds!
The solar wind causes the Sun to lose more than 1 million tons of mass per second. That may seem like a really big number, but consider this: The Earth’s mass is about 6.5 sextillion tons. If you write that out it would be 6,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons. The Sun’s mass is 333,000 times that of Earth. If you think about it like that, 1 million tons per second isn’t actually that much.
The solar wind escapes from coronal holes, which are generally found at the Sun’s poles. A coronal hole is an area in the corona that is thinner and less dense than the surrounding areas. It appears as a dark spot on the Sun’s surface since it is also a cooler temperature than the surrounding corona.
Picture Credit : Google
