Posts by cokelid

Nope - no voltages

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.