What is solar wind?

What is solar wind?
              The solar wind is the constant flow of charged particles from the Sun. These particles include protons, electrons and some nuclei of heavy elements. The speed of these particles is accelerated by high temperatures of the solar corona or outer region of the Sun, to velocities high enough to allow them to escape from the Sun's gravitational field.
              Recent research using satellites have show that solar winds are made up of plasma, which contains ionised gases mostly to hydrogen and helium, and have equal number of protons and electrons.
               The solar wind streams from the Sun though outer space at a speed of about 480 kilometres (300 miles) per second. It takes the particles about 3 1/2 days to reach the Earth.
               In 1958, the American physicist Eugene Norman Parker called this outward system of protons - the solar wind.
               The solar wind causes the tails of comets to change direction and point away from the Sun. It also causes magnetic storms, which may disrupt radio communication on Earth. The solar wind causes ionisation of the gases in the upper atmosphere, resulting in the coloured light phenomena known as auroras.
               When the solar wind encounters Earth's magnetic field a shock wave is produced, the nature of which is not fully understood. That part of the solar wind, which does not interact with Earth or the other planets, continues to travel at supersonic speeds up to a distance of approximately 20 astronomical units (one astronomical unit is about 1.5 x 108 kilometres). Any shock phenomenon encountered by it makes it lose its supersonic characteristics. Instead the gas cools off and eventually diffuses into the galactic space.