Solar wind Solar wind The solar wind is a stream of charged particles released from the upper atmosphere of the Sun, called the corona. This plasma consists of mostly electrons, protons and alpha particles with kinetic energy between 0.5 and 10 keV. Embedded within the solar-wind plasma is the interplanetary magnetic field. The solar wind varies in density, temperature and speed over time and over solar latitude and longitude. Its particles can escape the Sun's gravity because of their high energy resulting from the high temperature of the corona, which in turn is a result of the coronal magnetic field. At a
Diffusion damping during which simple atoms, e.g. hydrogen and helium, began to form in the cooling, but still very hot, soup of protons, electrons and photons that composed the universe. Prior to the recombination epoch, this "soup", a plasma, was largely opaque to the electromagnetic radiation of photons. This meant that the permanently excited photons were scattered by the protons and electrons too often to travel very far in straight lines. During the recombination epoch, the universe cooled rapidly as free electrons were captured by atomic nuclei; atoms formed from their constituent parts and the universe became transparent: the amount of photon