# Tag Info

## Hot answers tagged solar-wind

16 votes
Accepted

### How much water on the earth is made from hydrogen comes with solar wind?

Here is a way of getting a rough upper bound: the density $\rho$ of the solar wind is about 4 atoms per cm$^3$ (that we can assume are hydrogen), and it travels at $v=400-500$ km/s. That means that ...
• 10.5k
15 votes
Accepted

### Why do comets appear to have a continuous supply of dust?

The rate of loss of mass from a comet is perhaps surprisingly low. A paper The calculation of $Af\rho$ and mass loss rate for comets gives a rate for a "typical" comet at 1.29AU as 153kg/s. A typical ...
• 91.4k
13 votes
Accepted

### How much mass does the Sun lose as light, neutrinos, and solar wind?

The solar neutrino luminosity is about 2.3% of its electromagnetic luminosity (i.e. light). So the extra mass lost in the form of neutrino energy is 2.3% of your original calculation. The average ...
• 118k
10 votes

### What is the composition of the Solar Wind?

We have very good data on the heavy metals in the solar wind from the Charge, Element, Isotope Analysis System (CELIAS) on SOHO: Some of these elements were previously known; others were observed for ...
• 34.1k
10 votes
Accepted

### Why does the Solar Wind consist of charged particles?

You are right about the kinetic energy (ie the fast motion) of the particles being the reason, but wrong when you say They must be of almost the same energy if so there will be no relative kinetic ...
• 9,933
8 votes
Accepted

### Why does the solar wind switch to flowing straight by the time it reaches Earth?

When plasma moves in a magnetic field then the charged particles follow helical paths around the field lines, due to the $q\vec{v}\times \vec{B}$ Lorentz force. If the radius of gyration is small, ...
• 118k
7 votes
Accepted

### Why do the solar system planets go rock-gas-ice instead of rock-ice-gas when moving away from the sun?

Prelude It is now generally accepted in the planet formation community that planets form as a side-product of the star formation process in so-called protoplanetary discs. Protoplanetary discs have ...
7 votes

### Density of Plasma in Solar Corona

It depends on which region you consider. The lower corona has a plasma number density of the order of $10^9 cm^{-3}$, the upper corona about $10^5 cm^{-3}$. This is all quite variable though, ...
• 2,318
7 votes

### What determines the speed of a star's solar wind?

All stars, and also planets, lose mass because of atoms escaping from the atmosphere that are faster than the gravitational escape velocity. This suggests already that gravity i.e. the mass of stars ...
• 2,318
7 votes

The answer depends very much on what type of star you are talking about and what the driving mechanism of the wind is. Broadly we can split stars up into low-mass main-sequence stars (say $<2 M_\... • 118k 6 votes ### Does the Moon have an aurora? Technically, yes, the moon does have an atmosphere that gets ionized by the sun. NASA: Is There an Atmosphere on the Moon? our moon does indeed have an atmosphere consisting of some unusual gases,... • 4,334 6 votes Accepted ### Rate of Mass Loss from the Solar Wind $$\left( \frac{4 \pi (6.96e10\,\text{cm})^{2}}{1} \right)$$ This is the primary source of your error. Your value of 6.96×1010 cm is the radius of the Sun. The problem specifically said "Assuming at ... • 28.3k 6 votes ### Rate of Mass Loss from the Solar Wind The velocity and the density are at the earth position, so the area term must include the earth-sun distance instead of the solar radius. • 448 6 votes Accepted ### What are the experimental limits to the residual charge of the Sun? Some of the comments here seem to be suggesting that there should not be any residual charge of the Sun at all because of the fact that in a conducting medium no electric fields can exist. This ... • 2,318 5 votes Accepted ### Where will the atmosphere of our Earth go if our sun blows it away completely? The Sun erodes a planetary atmosphere through its solar wind. Presently, the solar wind passes Earth at 250-750 kps, which is roughly ten times the Sun's escape velocity from earth orbit. So atoms ... • 7,390 5 votes Accepted ### Energy carried by solar wind What are the velocity, mass, and charge distribution of the solar wind. Velocity The solar wind speed has a large range of variation, between ~250–820 km/s [e.g., Chen et al., 2014; Gopalswamy, 2006; ... 4 votes Accepted ### Does the sun blow a bubble into the interstellar medium? At the moment, the Solar System is inside the Local Interstellar Cloud (which is itself within the Local Bubble). The LIC has a neutral hydrogen number density of$\sim0.1\text{ cm}^{-3}, which is a ... • 34.1k 4 votes ### What are the Gamma rays and Cosmic rays effects on humans and equipments? First of all *not to consider me a conspiracy theorist(, but isn't landing on the moon a questionable issue? Only to conspiracy theorists. To everyone else, no, it's not a questionable issue. My ... • 28.3k 4 votes Accepted ### Will the Sun's solar wind push a permanent magnet out of our solar system? No. The magnetic field has two poles, the force on the two pole of the magnet is equal and opposite. This is why a compass needle will align in the North South direction, but is not pulled towards the ... • 91.4k 4 votes ### Solar Wind and Asteroid orbital behavior Sort of, via radiation pressure and heating. The Sun emits photons, which carry with them energy and momentum. Any flux of photons applies pressure to an object it hits; this is the basic principle ... • 34.1k 4 votes ### Does the magnetic field of earth restore? Remember that a magnetic field is just that: a field . There's no mass there. Its shape depends on the electromagnetic properties of Earth -- primarily the behavior of the outer core. When there's ... • 3,627 4 votes ### Why does the Solar Wind consist of charged particles? Expanding on @Steve Lintons answer: In physics no quantity is just large, a quantity can only be large relative to some other quantity. So here we want to compare the kinetic energy to something, and ... 4 votes Accepted ### Do Electric Charges in the Van Allen Radiation belt move in Opposite Directions? Yes and no. The question @JohnRennie links to in his comment Analogy between magnetic bottle and Van Allen's radiation belt contains a lot of relevant information, but packaged as an answer to this ... • 9,933 4 votes Accepted ### Is there a connection between the solar wind and the cosmic radiation? Cosmic radiation (which consists of high-energy protons and atomic nuclei) comes from the sun, other stars, even other galaxies. Solar wind is a part of that - the part coming from the sun, which ... • 4,969 4 votes Accepted ### Solar wind, Earth wind and planetary winds? From going through the literature the paper by Wang et al. 2021 is citing, I am nearly certain that the term "Earth wind" must be a recent invention, perhaps by those authors themselves. It ... 4 votes ### Does a red giant star produce more stellar wind than a yellow star? The Sun's current mass loss rate - a combination of the solar wind and radiation from the Sun - amounts to something like10^{-13}$solar masses per year. The mass loss rates from red giant stars are ... • 118k 4 votes ### How did Parker Solar Probe take what looks like 2D cross-sections of the solar wind in photographs; high contrast streaks in focus from volume effect? The WISPR instrument is a visible light imager. You're right that it doesn't have a narrow depth of focus; it is basically focused at infinity. The video says we are seeing streams of plasma. The ... • 1,774 3 votes ### Direction of Earth’s poles relative to the Sun’s movement around the Galaxy There is no difference in the number of cosmic particles. You seem to imagine that there are static clouds of gas in the universe that the sun is moving through. This is not the case. The gas in the ... • 91.4k 3 votes ### Would a large coronal mass ejection affect the earth evenly Would a large coronal mass ejection affect the earth evenley No, the effects on Earth from a large coronal mass ejection (CME) would disproportionately affect higher geographic latitudes in the form ... 3 votes ### Energy carried by solar wind I'm not sure such a detailed answer to your question is available. This book cites this paper as a source for the mass loss due to the solar wind:$\dot{M} \sim 2.5 \times 10^{-14}\,M_\odot/yr\$. ...
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