We’re going to return back to a long series of episodes we like to call: Radiation that Will Turn You Into a Superhero. This time we’re going to look at cosmic rays, which everyone knows made the Fantastic Four. These high-energy particles are streaming from the Sun and even intergalactic space, and do a wonderful job of destroying our DNA, giving us radiation sickness, and maybe (hopefully!) turning us into superheroes.

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This might be a daft question but hear goes. Is the solar wind a cosmic rays then? Or those protons of the solar wind are flung off the sun via a different mechanism?

The solar wind is high-energy electrons and protons (about 1 keV).

Some of the cosmic rays are solar (protons, electrons and heavy ions with energy ranging from a few tens of keV to GeV).

The difference is the energy level.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_...ar_cosmic_rays

Gotta love Wikipedia.

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If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it... of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms...
Albert Einstein

We are not sure of the origin of the most intense cosmic rays, but it likely is not our sun. They easily penetrate our skulls and cause not repairable brain damage. Super hero are unlkely, but long term exposure likely will cause something like dimentia or alzhrimers, even with several meters of regloth for shielding. Neil

My wife suspects this happened to me once...

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If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it... of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms...
Albert Einstein

There is an article in Sky and telescope about ultra-high energy cosmic rays. They discuss the "Oh-My-God" particle detected at Dugway, Utah in 1991. It was likely a proton, and had the kinetic energy of a baseball thrown at 55 mph. The energy was 3.2±0.9x10²⁰electron volts. They posit it came from NGC 5128, 12 million light years away. To an observer on the particle, the flight would have lasted only 20 minutes. After traveling 1 light year, the particle would be only 46 nanometers behind a photon emitted at the same time.

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Bill Slugg
Albany, GA