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Every second, the Sun flings over 1 million tons of matter into space, forming what we call solar wind. It’s composed of plasma, which is an extremely hot substance in which the elements have separated into positive ions and their lost electrons. With a density of six ions per cubic centimeter, as opposed to Earth’s millions of ions in the same volume of atmosphere, one wouldn’t expect much from solar wind. However, its velocity varies between 750 and 500 kilometers per second and it has an average temperature, near Earth, of 150,000 degrees Kelvin. Occasionally, it even reaches speeds of up to 1000 km/s. Proof of the existence of solar wind was first put forward in 1951 by Ludwing Biermann, who suggested that comet tails are always directed away from the Sun because they are pushed by a continuous flow of charged particles streaming out from the Sun, or solar wind. These charged particles of solar wind envelop our solar system in a magnetic bubble extending far out into interstellar space.