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Voyager 1 Discovers Bizarre and Baffling Region at Edge of Solar System
- julianpye 13y agoReports about Voyager at the edge of our solar system always remind me about the Truman Show, when Truman hits the set's walls...
- grecy 13y agoI was just wondering what the general consensus if Voyager 1 simply stops transmitting data next week. There one minute, gone the next...
- ceejayoz 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crystal_Spheres http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crystal_Spheres
- dclowd9901 13y ago[spoiler?] I don't understand; How'd they leave the solar system to visit the one that broke its sphere if they couldn't penetrate the crystal wall?
- michaelbuckbee 13y agoAny civilization (including our own) can break a sphere from the inside.
- quux 13y agoThey should have gone with "perverse and often baffling" for their headline.
- obviouslygreen 13y agoHopefully they have plenty of checks and tests to make sure this isn't the case, but having no knowledge of the details and simply reading this article, my thoughts at several points ran to "conspicuous instrumentation failure." Granted, it's totally reasonable that we should either not know what to expect or simply expect the wrong thing, having never been out that far. I just can't help wondering how much we can do to confirm what's being reported is based on valid readings (and, of course, whether that confirmation is being done before the PR people send it out into the media microcosm).
- cpncrunch 13y agoThat was my suspicion as well after reading this article. We really need to wait until more data is gathered - or better still, another probe enters the area - before making any grand pronouncements.
- TallGuyShort 13y agoIt's been announced that Voyager 1 has left the solar system so many times, I didn't expect to read an article that said Voyager 1 hadn't even left the solar system at all yet!
- pavanky 13y agoRelevant xkcd http://xkcd.com/1189/ http://xkcd.com/1189/
- squidsoup 13y agoIs there some kind of law that states for all science/maths/technology phenomena there is a relevant xkcd?
- protomyth 13y agoThere are even fan additions to make them relevant: http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=55907&start=280#p1997605 http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=55907&start=280#p... or http://imageshack.us/a/img32/4845/spiritisnothing.png http://imageshack.us/a/img32/4845/spiritisnothing.png
- andrewflnr 13y agoFeels like for any phenomenon in life you can find one, even if the link is occasionally tenuous.
- Strom 13y agoYeah, but none of those announcements have come from NASA. In fact, one of the recent solar system exit announcements triggered NASA to publish a press release [1] to let everyone know that Voyager 1 has, in fact, NOT left the solar system and all these announcements are wild speculation by people who don't directly work on the Voyager 1 team. [1] http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/voyager20130320.html http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/voyager20130320.ht...
- snorkel 13y ago
- 51Cards 13y ago“I’m convinced that nature is far more imaginative than we are." - Stamatios Krimigis Love that quote.
- eigenbom 13y ago"I think nature's imagination is so much greater than man's, she's never going to let us relax." -- the great Richard Feynmann agreed. :)
- 51Cards 13y agoGood find, thanks. I thought I had heard it before but a web search came up empty for me.
- cristianpascu 13y agoThis sounds SO pantheistic.
- davidw 13y ago> The sun produces a plasma of charged particles called the solar wind, which get blown supersonically from its atmosphere at more than 1 million km/h. On earth, that'd be 'supersonic', by a "slim margin". But what's that even mean in space?
- nathanb 13y agoMy thoughts exactly. Also: "the spacecraft’s instruments indicated that particles around it were moving subsonically" lolwut?
- antoko 13y agoCurrently the 2nd comment on the page of article addresses that. Actually, supersonic simply refers to anything moving faster than the speed of sound in a particular medium. The Earth's atmosphere has a particular speed of sound but so does the solar atmosphere and wind. Apparently, the speed of sound in the solar wind is roughly 220,000 mph. Supersonic and subsonic are the terms that scientists use to describe such things. and then links to this... http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/623/1/511/fulltext/61043.text.html http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/623/1/511/fulltext/61043...
- nathanb 13y agoInteresting, thanks for clarifying. Perhaps I'm biased by my own ignorance, but the speed of sound in the solar wind (or the fact that terms like "speed of sound" still make sense in an ostensible vacuum) seems like the sort of thing a reasonable person might not know. If science writing is to be accessible to the layperson, an explanatory parenthetical (even just clarifying the approximate speed at which the subsonic wind was traveling) would have been helpful. Thanks for the downvote, though.
- antoko 13y agoI absolutely didn't downvote you, I fully agree with your point, and was equally confused by the use those terms in that context.
- dmckeon 13y agoMy takeaway from this article was: measurements do not match theoretical model, researchers await more measurements, a more accurate model, or both. tl;dr: Science, people!
- Arnor 13y agoI'm amazed that Voyager is still sending us data. It had to travel a a bajillion (+/- 100) km and not get blasted by some flying scrap of rock. It's components had to withstand every form of radiation our solar system has to offer, and the signals themselves had to make it all the way back to Earth without degrading beyond use. Wow! Still, I'm worried that the tools of the 80s are not going to be sufficient to provide the details we'd need to understand what happens at the edge of the solar system. For my part, I hope that we find some of those hidden dimensions, and it turns up on the other side of the solar system in a couple weeks.
- UnFleshedOne 13y ago> For my part, I hope that we find some of those hidden dimensions, and it turns up on the other side of the solar system in a couple weeks. Now that would turn the solar system into one huge game of asteroids...
- Afforess 13y ago>and not get blasted by some flying scrap of rock. I think a lot of people don't understand the scale of space. It's really, really empty. The chance of being intercepted by any solid matter is incredibly low. I can't even make any reasonable analogies to distances on Earth, it's so extreme.
- ars 13y agoLet's try: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28%28mass+grain+sand%29+%2F+%28%28mass+solar+system+-+mass+sun%29+%2F+%284+pi+%28size+solar+system%29^3%29%2F3%29%29+^+%281%2F3%29 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28%28mass+grain+sand%2... Answer: That's equivalent to a single grain of sand in a cube 1 mile on each side. (You'll have to convert the final result to miles in a second step - it timed out when I tried to make it do it in one step.) And this is including the mass of all the planets! (But not the sun.)
- schiffern 13y ago…and that's just for the Solar system, an incredibly busy region by space standards.
- natch 13y agoSeems perfectly explained by the fact that the craft has just exited a huge "balloon" (it's a metaphor, for any nitpickers) formed by the solar wind. The lack of intergalactic particles from the sunward direction could be simply because the craft is in the balloon's shadow.
- obituary_latte 13y agoThis was my exact thought too. Makes me wonder if there isn't something else going on as it seems like such an obvious explanation.
- ars 13y ago"The models that have been thought to predict what should happen are all incorrect" A bit off topic, but that's why you should never ever draw conclusions from models. Use a model to guide research (i.e. tell you where to look), but never consider the model as an answer. I see far too many papers published based on models. This should not be accepted, this is not science. It doesn't matter if the model is the only available thing. If you have no other way of getting information then you must admit defeat (hopefully temporary), but never give in and start believing your models.
- vault_ 13y agoIf you were to be sending a probe to the edge of the solar system, what exactly would you use to plan and predict its journey if not models then? Would you wait until you have a way to measure what happens at the edge of the solar system before sending out your probe to measure it? The entirety physics is essentially a model. If you want to completely know everything before you start trying to do anything, you'll get anything done.
- ars 13y ago> what exactly would you use to plan and predict its journey I guess you didn't read what I wrote. I will quote again for you: "Use a model to guide research". > Would you wait until you have a way to measure what happens at the edge of the solar system before sending out your probe to measure it? By all means - send out the probe. But until the probe returns data do not publish any papers purporting to know what the edge of the solar system looks like. > The entirety physics is essentially a model. No. It started as a model (or idea), but every single step was confirmed using the actual world, and not a model. > If you want to completely know everything before you start trying to do anything, you'll get anything done. Next time read what you are replying to so you can give a better response.
- vault_ 13y ago> Use a model to guide research. This I'll concede. I misinterpreted your point and tone as "don't rely on anything you haven't already measured". I would also agree that it's rather grating to read things that say "X totally happens (according to model Y)". But I don't think that it is inherently bad for one to say "Model Y predicts X". > No. It started as a model (or idea), but every single step was confirmed using the actual world, and not a model. This however, I do disagree with. It's still a model. It wasn't "confirmed"; it was "not disproven". Physics will always be a model. I don't see the problem with saying "this model turned out to be wrong so we need to come up with a better one" (exactly what's happening in the article). A large number of important breakthroughs in physics were from scientists demonstrating the failures of models or running into them accidentally (see caloric theory and the Michelson–Morley experiment).
- michaelfeathers 13y agoAgain?
- ChuckMcM 13y agoI love the Voyager program, its great science and its paid back many times its investment in knowledge. But the writing at Wired could use some help. The things that bug me most were calling particles in space "supersonic" (what does that even mean when you have no atmosphere to carry sound?) and that they "carried the magnetic field" as opposed to "the motion of these charged particles generates a magnetic field." That said, I look forward to future updates from the science team and the space craft doesn't run out of juice before it runs out of things to report on.
- mietek 13y agoSimilarly, "deadly explosions of massive stars"?
- cheald 13y agoAs opposed to the less lethal explosions of smaller stars, which are good for quick tans.
- sageikosa 13y agoIf a star explodes and its system that has no life, is it "deadly"?
- cheald 13y agoStringently, yes. To be "deadly" simply requires something to possess the ability to cause death. Actually causing death isn't a requirement. (Non-exploding stars are plenty deadly, too.)
- sageikosa 13y agoExcept if the exploding star has no life anywhere near it, it has no ability to cause any actual death. I don't disagree that if something were (hypothetically) living in its blast radius, it would be killed, just that if nothing (hypothetically) were so living, it can't really be capable of killing said hypothetically non-existing things.
- michaelsbradley 13y agoCould it be explained in terms of Voyager 1 moving through a double layer[1] with respect to the stellar and interstellar plasma environments? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_layer_(plasma) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_layer_(plasma)
- mrbrowning 13y agoI'm guessing the sensors on Voyager 1 have some sort of self-check diagnostics built in so that NASA can reasonably rule out sensor malfunction?
- nickhalfasleep 13y agoThey go through self-calibration tests.
- moron4hire 13y agoWhat if Voyager 1 is sensing things it's dragging with it?
- dschiptsov 13y agoA wall on which other stars are painted?)
- quackerhacker 13y agoI love the wonders of space, I grew up watching Star Trek Voyager. What continues to amaze me, is the drone programs we have, I just wonder when we'll start advancing our drone programs for space. Ever since I was young I used to think aliens existed, but that aliens used some type of biorobot to explore. Kind of like we do with rovers, and satellites...just not in the image of us.
- Aardwolf 13y agoThis was launched 36 years ago, and still sending data! How did they make it that sturdy back then? Do they still make them like that today? Is there actually any mission at all with the intention to have a new spacecraft leave the solar system, or is it just a coincidence with the voyagers and now all missions are only for planets?
- zokier 13y agoThe MER rovers (Opportunity and Spirit) are quite remarkably reliable too. Not 36 years reliable, but they are operating in far more hostile environment. Opportunity remains active as of 2013, having already exceeded its planned 90 sol (Martian days) duration of activity by 9 years, 62 days (in Earth time). Opportunity has continued to move, gather scientific observations, and report back to Earth for over 37 times its designed lifespan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_%28rover%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_%28rover%29
- gus_massa 13y agoThe recent version is the New Horizon mission: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons and http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.htm... It was launched in 2006, and passed by Jupiter in 2007 (to do some experiments, photos and gain speed). It will pass by Pluto in 2014 and will take the firsts detailed photos of Pluto. It will reach 100 AU in 2038 (Voyager 1 is a little more far away) so to see what is happening there using current technology we will need to wait ...
- Aardwolf 13y ago2038... I hope it's not using 32-bit Unix time.