Voyager probe reaches edge of Solar System's 'bubble' NASA's famous Voyager 1 space probe, sailing outwards into the interstellar void far beyond the orbit of Pluto, has entered a new and never-before-seen region of space thought to be the very edge of the "bubble" maintained around the solar system by the power of the Sun. "We shouldn't have long to wait to find out what the …
Won't be much of one, I promise...
What tech from 34 years ago still has the power to make us go "Wow!" like the stories of the Voyager probes do? How awesome does it seem that the probes that were constructed on a (relative) shoestring, boosted millions of miles across space /continue/ to massively outlive the projected lifespans and send more data than we could have ever possibly imagined?
Yet the stupid twunts in power cut the budgets.
At a time when we are seriously starved of feelgood stories, when the world spends more on killing each other in a week than they do on space in a year (15B$ on nasa, 1+T$ on military), when we need something to prove that cutting edge research not only gives results, but gives results that make folk sit up and look at the universe.
Sometimes I wonder if it's worth digging our way out of a hole.
Feel better for that. Cheers.
According to my electric diary, things that still make people go "Wow!" from 1977 include:
Apple was incorporated in early 1977, Apple II released a couple months later.
The self titled "The Clash" album was released.
Optic fiber first used "in the wild" for telephony.
Insulin first grown in the lab.
Software Development Labs incorporated (now known as "Oracle Corp.").
First oil through the entire length of the Trans Alaska Pipeline.
Tandy's TRS-80 was released.
First Space Shuttle tested with tethered & free flights on and off a 747.
WOW! (sic ... look it up.)
Commodore PET.
Porsche 928.
Atari 2600.
Eradication of Smallpox.
"Never mind the Bollocks" released.
Harvey Milk elected as City Supervisor of San Francisco.
London to New York Concorde service.
"Have Blue" flies for the first time (This entry added as a link to the official announcement over a decade later, for somewhat obvious reasons).
On a more personal note, I got my first contract designing and installing a client/server based computer network (Arcnet-based CNC machine network in Oakland, CA). I was still at Uni ... Two days before I landed the contract, we had hooked up the first three TCP/IP nodes on the then ARPANET ...
WOW! is a perspective thing ...
in the intensity of high-energy electrons" That's very, very impressive stuff.
However, to quote the Dane, "I'll have grounds more relative than this."
Sure, I'd like to see some interstellar space between Voyager and my roof top. And then some solid proof Voyager's not still in the envelope.
Then there's intergalactic space.
(Doesn't this remind you a bit of Nimrod shooting his arrow from the top of the Tower of Babel?)
The idea of Voyager floating through space with only its 8 track for company is brilliant.
If only it was blasting out Rita Coolidge's Higher and Higher, Fleetwood Mac's Don't Stop, Foreigner's Cold As Ice and of course the theme from Star Wars (also a number 1 hit in 1977).
(Before the pedants get on their soap boxes: use your imagination dudes)
My inner geek got quite excited by this article. Considering the distances involved thing seem to happening quite quickly out there. These layers seem to be relatively thin.
I did wonder if there will be issues when the probe passed through the boundary. Will the radio signals be bounced by the different layers? It's only got a couple of hundred Watts to play with.
That's remarkable in itself, 3 lighbulbs of power and we can still pick it up.
Why is there no 'WIN' icon for this ?
At this pace Voyager will never make it to the machine planet and be back in time to save the whales and help Captain Kirk with his one conquest that was actually a HUMAN female!!
(Of course, she was a 20th century whale-loving lady, so she wasn't aware of Kirk's interstellar bad boy rep. Thus she was helpless before his whole BS "You're into whales too!?" approach combined with the awesome power of 23rd century hair restoration technology)
Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 likely got there before Voyager but we haven't been in contact with either for years so there's no way to know for sure. However, based upon when they were launched and their intended trajectories, they are theoretically the farthest flung human devices ever.
Ed: "Hey Rob - looks like we're just about to cross the heliopause."
Rob: "Great! Interstellar space, here we come..."
Voyager: *BONK!*
Seriously though, there's something a bit melancholy about the thought of these tiny spacecraft gamely soldiering on out there, and something hugely impressive about 1970s-era hardware still functioning in an incredibly hostile environment. Well done, guys.
There's also the tantalizing possibility that they are offering us a glimpse of new physics, in particular that the force of gravity may not be quite as Newton and Einstein thought.
They're off-course by a tiny but measurable and unexplained amount.
There are of course various hypotheses about why this is, other than new physics. We can't tell, because they weren't built as fundamental physics experiments. Perhaps some new probes should be sent after them, that are designed to probe the nature of gravity.
"Voyager has detected a 100-fold increase in the intensity of high-energy electrons from elsewhere in the galaxy diffusing into our solar system from outside"
Funny how articles like this continue to talk of streams of ionised particles (e.g. protons) and electrons as a solar 'wind'. If electrons are moving in space, this constitues an electric current (which generates an electric field). If electrons are moving, there must be a potential difference (voltage) causing them to move. High energy electrons must be being forced to move by a very high potential difference. If these electrons are from elsewhere in the galaxy, then the stars in this galaxy are linked by a series of electric currents and voltages. All this stuff about wind is a load of hot air
You need to read up a bit on magnetohydrodynamics (MHD)
The basic idea is that the gas is so hot as to be a fully ionised plasma (and extremely rarified). The electrons are very mobile and immediately move to neutralise any electric fields (and so no potentials as you're talking about). The magnetic field is key to this "fluid", and acts like it is "frozen in" to the plamsa sweeping along with it (and the electrons can only move freely along the mag field lines). You can then think of the "wind" as two fluids (essentially protons and electrons) flowing through space but neutral on average. Due to the mag field you get cool things like different temperatures parallel to and perpendicular to the mag field.
As for the electrons coming from elsewhere in the galaxy, they could be flowing along in an interstellar wind (in a fluid that is neutral overall) or they could be from extra-solar helium and hydrogen that gets ionised at the bow shock (that the Voyagers passed through).
Rest assured the people working on this stuff really do get it, and calling the solar wind a "wind" is a fair analogy.
Also I'm pretty sure the 8-track recorders stopped working (or were turned off) long ago. We only get "live" data from the Voyagers when they are covered by the DSN, and when we're not actively listening, the telemetry (and data) is lost.
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