The sun and the interstellar medium

Details The sun and the interstellar medium The sun and the interstellar medium

Sep 1986

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1986sciam.255...92p&link_type=abstract

Scientific American (ISSN 0036-8733), vol. 255, Sept. 1986, p. 92-96, 98, 99.

Physics

Climate, Interstellar Gas, Molecular Clouds, Solar Activity Effects, Solar System, Early Stars, Earth Environment, Line Spectra, Orion Nebula, Solar Cycles

Scientific paper

Space around the earth is bathed with UV radiation at 1216 A, a condition which supports a model of natural gas for the interstellar medium. The emissions originate from hydrogen and helium atoms returned to a ground state from an excited state. The relaxation reactions occur within 10 AU of the sun, the exciting source for the gas cloud through which the solar system is moving. The particles are attracted by solar gravity, repelled by radiation pressure depending on the phase of the solar cycle, or are excited as they travel parallel paths through the solar system when gravity and radiation pressure are balanced. A collisionless shock front forms as inward streaming particles encounter the solar wind 75-200 AU upwind. A turbulent plasma shell 50 AU thick forms sunward of the shock. The interface is drawn to a tail extending 1000 AU downwind of the sun. The particles, moving from 22-26 km/sec relative to the sun, may be arriving from an event which took place in the Scorpius-Centaurus association 10 Myr ago.

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