If you did not read the news, space is a dangerous place. Aside from the lack of air, it is full of large and small objects zipping around (sometimes falling to Earth and scaring the horses). This includes high levels of radiation from our friend the sun. That friend would fry us deader than a — never mind. But the Master Engineer who gave us our usually well-mannered sun also gave us protection from it.
There have been a couple of posts here about the Van Allen belts, our planet-sized deflector shields that protect us from the solar output and the sun's occasional sneezes. The solar wind is pretty much constant, and Earth plows through it like a boat through water. This bow shock does some interesting things to the electrons that should join in with the other solar stuff to destroy us. Instead, friction from those bad boy belts shred the solar wind. Some owlhoots will have us believe this is the product of luck and cosmic evolution. Not hardly!
To read the rest of this fascinating article, click on "Van Allen Belts Protect Earth from Solar Wind".