Voyager 2 Crosses T-Shock, Finds Solar System is “Squashed”
Voyager 2 has followed Voyager 1 into the heliosheath, a vast region the far edge of our solar system, and surprised its team with new discoveries, Voyager scientists reported today at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting being held in San Francisco. Now both of the legendary spacecraft are headed for the real Final Frontier — interstellar space.
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Since both Voyager spacecraft are traveling about a million miles a day through this realm where Sun’s influence begins to ‘fade to the blackness’ of space, the current models predict that Voyager 1 will cross into interstellar space in “about seven to 10 years,” Stone told The Planetary Society. “Voyager 2 will follow Voyager 1 out of the heliosheath and into interstellar space about three years later” or in 2017-2020, he said.
Unlike Voyager 1, which crossed the termination shock in December 2004 and is leaving the solar system rising above the ecliptic plane, at an angle of about 35 degrees, at a rate of about 520 million kilometers (about 320 million miles) a year, Voyager 2 took a different path into this boundary region.
Diving below the ecliptic plane at an angle of about 48 degrees Voyager 2 cruised into the area where the solar wind hits the thin gas between the stars, at a rate of about 470 million kilometers (about 290 million miles) a year. The path less traveled in this case revealed something Voyager scientists had been suspecting for a while now -– that that our solar system is asymmetrical or “squashed,” that it is dynamic, changing shape and structure as it moves through space, and not a static sphere as some theories long held.
What all this means is — we — everything on Earth and in our solar system — resides in a shape-shifting bubble that zips through interstellar space. The Voyagers are about to break on through the bubble — to the other side.
article from Planetary Society
Great fodder for SF and F writers. Good article chock full o’ links.
However, if the article makes your brain hiccup, here’s some links:
Planetary Society – Voyager topics
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) – Voyager site (news page)
Wikipedia – Voyager Program