Solar Wind
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the flow of particles from the outer region of the Sun which we observe in the Northern and Southern Lights, interacting with Earth’s magnetosphere, and in comet tails that stream away from the Sun regardless of their own direction. One way of defining the boundary of the solar system is where the pressure from the solar wind is balanced by that from the region between the stars, the interstellar medium. Its existence was suggested from the C19th and Eugene Parker developed the theory of it in the 1950s and it has been examined and tested by a series of probes in C20th up to today, with more planned.
→ Listen on BBC Sounds website
Guests
- Andrew Coates
3 episodes
Professor of Physics and Deputy Director in charge of the Solar System at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London -
Helen Mason OBE No other episodes
Reader in Solar Physics at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, Fellow at St Edmund's College -
Tim Horbury No other episodes
Professor of Physics at Imperial College London
Reading list
-
Basic Space Plasma Physics
Wolfgang Baumjohann and Rudolf A. Treumann (Imperial College Press, 1996) Google Books → -
Our Explosive Sun: A Visual Feast of Our Source of Light and Life
Pal Brekke (Springer, 2012) Google Books → -
The Sun Kings: The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington and the Tale of How Modern Astronomy Began
Stuart Clark (Princeton University Press, 2009) Google Books → -
Physics of Solar System Plasmas
Thomas E. Cravens (Cambridge University Press, 1997) Google Books → -
The Sun
Leon Golub and Jay M. Pasachoff (Reaktion Books, 2017) Google Books → -
15 Million Degrees: A Journey to the Centre of the Sun
Lucie Green (Penguin, 2016) Google Books → -
Introduction to Space Physics
Margaret G. Kivelson and Christopher T. Russell (Cambridge University Press, 1995) Google Books → -
Sun, Earth and Sky
Kenneth R. Lang (Springer, 1995) Google Books → -
Basics of the Solar Wind
Nicole Meyer-Vernet (Cambridge University Press, 2007) Google Books → -
Guide to the Sun
Kenneth J. H. Phillips (Cambridge University Press, 1992) Google Books → -
Space Physics: An Introduction
C. T. Russell, J. G. Luhmann and R. J. Strangeway (Cambridge University Press, 2016) Google Books →
Related episodes
-
The Sun
1 Jan, 2015 520 Astronomy -
The Earth’s Core
30 Apr, 2015 550 Earth sciences and geology -
Plasma
13 Oct, 2016 530 Physics -
The Kuiper Belt
2 Mar, 2017 520 Astronomy -
Comets
17 Jan, 2013 520 Astronomy -
The Vacuum of Space
30 Apr, 2009 530 Physics -
The Death of Stars
9 Jun, 2022 520 Astronomy -
Cosmic Rays
16 May, 2013 530 Physics -
Mercury
5 May, 2024 520 Astronomy -
The Proton
26 Apr, 2018 530 Physics
Programme ID: m000dg9n
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000dg9n
Auto-category: 520 (Astronomy & allied sciences)
Hello (First sentence from this episode)
Hello, the solar wind is matter, blown from the sun out into the whole solar system at up to 2 million miles per hour.