A new view of the solar system: Astrophysical jets driven by the sun

As the sun skims through the galaxy, it flings out charged particles in a stream of plasma called the solar wind. The solar wind creates a bubble, known as the heliosphere, which extends far outside the solar system. For decades, scientists have visualized the heliosphere as comet-shaped, with a very long tail extending thousands of times farther than the distance from Earth to the sun.