Submitted by PeteyMcPetey t3_yiqe5c in explainlikeimfive
DiamondIceNS t1_iuk3yyl wrote
It'd probably be more intuitive to call it "stellar spray".
"Wind" implies that there's already a medium hanging around, and "wind" is just what we call it when it starts to move around. That's not really what's going on. There is no medium quite like that in space (I mean, technically there is, but the absolutely miniscule amounts of it is not what stellar winds are made of).
What stars (like the sun) are doing is basically sneezing particles outward in all directions at all times. Like when you see a person sneeze in just the right light and you see the spray of droplets fly out into the air. There is a kind of flow to it, like wind currents, but it's not a flow of stuff that was already there, it's a cascade of stuff being ejected out from a source.
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