Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An outer region of the solar system, about 8 billion miles (12.8 billion kilometers) from the Sun, where a standing shock wave is generated as the solar wind, encountering the interstellar medium, slows to subsonic speeds.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun astronomy the
boundary marking one of the outer limits of theSun 'sinfluence , where thesolar wind dramatically slows - noun astronomy by extension, that point for space around any
star
Etymologies
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Examples
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It would only temporarily mask the pent-up warming implicit in the ongoing buildup of carbon dioxide, and this pent-up warming would be released in a catastrophically rapid “termination shock” if circumstances force the cessation of solar geoengineering.
‘Termination shock’: trust our expert warnings on geoengineering’s planetary risks | Raymond Pierrehumbert, Julia Slingo, Michael Mann and Valerie Masson-Delmotte Raymond Pierrehumbert 2026
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