Monday, June 04, 2007

From Stellar Wind to Sun?

A new theory suggests that a "wind" of ionized particles from a star may have spurred a change in the distribution of mass inside of our sun's nebula, causing some hydrogen to clump together and form our sun. The solar wind is something that is very familiar to our part of the solar system. It is a contiuation of the sun's corona which extends all the way past Pluto to the heliopause, where it meets the interstellar wind, which finally ends any significant effects of the solar wind. It is composed of a plasma. A plasma is a gaseous state consisting of positive and negative ions and which is very liable to electrical and magnetic interactions because of its possibilities for conductivity.
When the sun was a T-Tauri star (a baby which didn't fuse Hydrogen yet) it emitted 1000 times more solar wind than it does now, and even now it is still emitting enough to help cause auroras, geomagnetic storms, communication problems on satelites and, every once in a while a really really energetic particle like the "Oh My God" particle, which was a proton with as much energy as a 60 mpH baseball!
It was thought that the sun formed from its nebula because of a shockwave from a nearby supernova which changed the density of the nebula and allowed some the of the hydrogen to clump together. Now, though, scientists are proposing a less explosive culprit, stellar wind.

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