Bow Shock
By 2012, it was determined the Sun has no bow shock. Before then, it was hypothesized that the Sun had a bow shock produced in its travels within the interstellar medium (see image). The shock is named from its resemblance to the wake left by a ship's bow and is formed for similar reasons, though of plasma instead of water. Bow shocks will occur if the interstellar medium is moving supersonically "toward" the sun, since its solar wind moves "away" from the sun supersonically. When the interstellar wind hits the heliosphere it slows and creates a region of turbulence. NASA's Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell believed the solar bow shock may have lain at around 230 AU
This phenomenon has been observed outside our solar system by NASA's orbital GALEX telescope. The red giant star Mira in the constellation Cetus has been shown to have both a cometlike debris tail of ejecta from the star and a distinct bow shock preceding it in the direction of its movement through space (at over 130 kilometers per second).
Read more about this topic: Heliosphere
Famous quotes containing the words bow and/or shock:
“The bow cannot always stand bent, nor can human frailty subsist without some lawful recreation.”
—Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616)
“Coming out, all the way out, is offered more and more as the political solution to our oppression. The argument goes that, if people could see just how many of us there are, some in very important places, the negative stereotype would vanish overnight. ...It is far more realistic to suppose that, if the tenth of the population that is gay became visible tomorrow, the panic of the majority of people would inspire repressive legislation of a sort that would shock even the pessimists among us.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)