Solar wind speedĪ Coronal mass ejection (CME) captured by NASA and ESA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). "Without the heliosphere, life would certainly have evolved differently - and maybe not at all," says heliophysicst Richard Marsden in the ESA statement. Without our protective bubble, these high-energy atom fragments would constantly bombard Earth. Comic rays are generated outside our solar system and blaze along at almost the speed of light. The heliosphere acts as a protective shield, defending us against cosmic rays consisting of energetic particles that can damage living cells. (1 AU, or astronomical unit, is the average distance from Earth to the sun, it is equivalent to roughly 93 million miles (150 million kilometers). The closest boundary of the heliosphere is about 100 AU out from the sun, according to an ESA statement (opens in new tab). According to NASA, the heliosphere is shaped like a long wind sock (opens in new tab) as it moves with the sun. The solar wind sweeps through the solar system far beyond the orbit of Pluto, forming a large "bubble" called the heliosphere. (Image credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center) (opens in new tab) Solar wind consisting of charged particles and the sun's magnetic field bombard Earth's magnetosphere. These events, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), can trigger geomagnetic storms in the environment around Earth, which are associated with the beautiful aurora displays, but can also wreak havoc with power grids, telecommunication networks and satellites orbiting the planet. In addition to the constant streams of solar wind, the sun sometimes expulses massive quantities of those charged particles in one go. Then in 1962, NASA's Mariner 2 spacecraft detected the presence of solar wind particles during its voyage to Venus. Though Chandrasekhar wasn't fond of the particle idea, he accepted Parker's theory because he could not find any issues with Parker's mathematics, the University of Chicago said. Support for this theory finally came from astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar - who, decades later became the namesake of NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. "The first reviewer on the paper said, 'Well I would suggest that Parker go to the library and read up on the subject before he tries to write a paper about it, because this is utter nonsense.'"
His theory was widely criticized at the time, Parker recalled in 2018. The solar wind transports a million tons of matter into space every second, according to NASA (opens in new tab).
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