You are currently viewing the summary.
View Full TextLog in to view the full text
AAAS login provides access to Science for AAAS members, and access to other journals in the Science family to users who have purchased individual subscriptions.
More options
Download and print this article for your personal scholarly, research, and educational use.
Buy a single issue of Science for just $15 USD.
Summary
The precise source of the wind of particles that originates near the sun's surface and blows throughout the solar system has been a mystery. Solar physicists' best guess has been that one component, a steady, fast wind that blows at up to 800 kilometers a second, originates near the sun's poles; the wind's other component, more capricious and slow, seems to come from somewhere within a broad region around the solar equator. Now, by coordinating observations of the sun's atmosphere from two different spacecraft, a new study may have finally pinpointed the source of the slow wind--while calling into doubt the standard wisdom on the fast wind.
