Shifting Interstellar Wind Shows Larger Implications

A new study has shown, over the course of the last 40 years, that interstellar winds have changed direction, if only slightly. The study took data from the 1970’s onward from eleven different satellites. This change in the direction of the Interstellar Wind shows larger implications than one may realize.

While some may already be familiar with Solar Wind, more may be unfamiliar with Interstellar Wind. Solar Wind is what scientists call the stream of charged particles that are emitted from the sun out to beyond our solar system. In this wind are not only charged particles of Hydrogen and Helium, but solar radiation as well.

The Interstellar Wind, as one might imagine, is the stream of charged particles entering our solar system from somewhere else. In this case from the large gas cloud that our solar system is currently traveling through. Just like our planet moves around the sun, our solar system moves around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. In fact, our solar system is currently traveling through a loose cloud of interstellar gas known as the Local Interstellar Cloud, at about 52,000 miles an hour, relatively.