linguistic:paraphrasing
Composition and physical characteristics

The interplanetary medium includes interplanetary dust, cosmic rays, and hot plasma from the solar wind. The density of the interplanetary medium is very low, decreasing in inverse proportion to the square of the distance from the Sun. It is variable, and may be affected by magnetic fields and events such as coronal mass ejections. Typical particle densities in the interplanetary medium are about 5-40 particles/cm, but exhibit substantial variation. In the vicinity of the Earth, it contains about 5 particles/cm, but values as high as 100 particles/cm have been observed.

The temperature of the interplanetary medium varies through the solar system. Joseph Fourier estimated that interplanetary medium must have temperatures comparable to those observed at Earth's poles, but on faulty grounds: lacking modern estimates of atmospheric heat transport, he saw no other means to explain the relative consistency of Earth's climate. A very hot interplanetary medium remained a minor position among geophysicists as late as 1959, when Chapman proposed a temperature on the order of 10000 K, but observation in Low Earth orbit of the exosphere soon contradicted his position. In fact, both Fourier and Chapman's final predictions were correct: because the interplanetary medium is so rarefied, it does not exhibit thermodynamic equilibrium. Instead, different components have different temperatures. The solar wind exhibits temperatures consistent with Chapman's estimate in cislunar space, and dust particles near Earth's orbit exhibit temperatures 257–298 K (3–77 °F), averaging about 283 K (50 °F). In general, the solar wind temperature decreases proportional to the inverse-square of the distance to the Sun; the temperature of the dust decreases proportional to the inverse cube root of the distance. For dust particles within the asteroid belt, typical temperatures range from 200 K (−100 °F) at 2.2 AU down to 165 K (−163 °F) at 3.2 AU.

Since the interplanetary medium is a plasma, or gas of ions, the interplanetary medium has the characteristics of a plasma, rather than a simple gas. For example, it carries the Sun's magnetic field with it, is highly electrically conductive (resulting in the heliospheric current sheet), forms plasma double layers where it comes into contact with a planetary magnetosphere or at the heliopause, and exhibits filamentation (such as in aurorae).

The plasma in the interplanetary medium is also responsible for the strength of the Sun's magnetic field at the orbit of the Earth being over 100 times greater than originally anticipated. If space were a vacuum, then the Sun's 10 tesla magnetic dipole field would reduce with the cube of the distance to about 10 tesla. But satellite observations show that it is about 100 times greater at around 10 tesla. Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) theory predicts that the motion of a conducting fluid (e.g., the interplanetary medium) in a magnetic field induces electric currents which in turn generate magnetic fields, and in this respect it behaves like an MHD dynamo.