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Vger 2 (Voyager) took off in 1977, and over the last 30 years has been working pretty well. Vger is now 12,680,021,376 kilometers away and is traveling at 56 327 km per hour.
Think about it this way: How many instruments in current scientific labs, and how many computers sitting on anyone's desktop, were made n 1977. Probably a few, but not many. Just now, this space ship is in the vicinity of the Plasma Boundary, or the Termination Shock Wave. I like to think of the Termination Shock Wave as a speed bump, or maybe one of those spiky things in parking lots ... (DO NOT BACK UP - TIRE DAMAGE WILL RESULT) ... that surrounds the solar system. Or, it's like the doorways at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis after a Game being played on a very cold day or in the rain ... everybody is leaving the stadium but as they reach the outdoors, they slow down (to adjust their hats, open their umbrellas, etc.) so there is a kind of standing wave of extra, dense, vibrating humanity.
The Termination Shockwave is this standing wave, sometimes called the helio sheath, surrounding the solar system where solar particles that are constantly streaming out of the sun, at roughly the speed of light, slow down so they can join the somewhat lower energy background stuff in the interstellar space. In other words, it is the edge of the solar system.
MIT is proudly touting the fact that the instrument they installed in Vger-2 thirty years ago to measure plasma (The Plasma Science Instrument) is still working and is getting some good data n this phenomenon.
They have found an unexpectedly strong magnetic field which mushes up the boundary and deforms it from the uniform sphere they expected to see there. Also, they got a chill ... just like those people leaving the Humphrey Dome ... that they were not expecting. The interstellar space, outside the solar system boundary, is about an order of magnitude cooler than expected.
That's a little far out to realize you forgot your mittens. I hope Vger brought his mittens.
Scientists are said to be "scrambling" to come up with an explanation. I think the use of that term is very funny. Hey guys, it's not like there's a test on this Friday, relax. You'll explain it eventually, most likely.
One explanation which is rather voodoo like, is that the heat is being transfered to particles that are too hot for the instruments on Vger to measure.
[source: MIT press release]
Physical Science
Comments
1977 is the first year that I was aware of what year it was. Amazing!
did
Posted by: did | December 11, 2007 2:51 PM