
Voyager 1 Discovers Bizarre and Baffling Region at Edge of Solar System - lobo_tuerto
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/06/voyager-unexpected-region
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Arnor
I'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.

~~~
Afforess
> _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.

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kristopolous
there's a lot of to-scale installations. May even be one in Your Fair City or
Town:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System_model](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System_model)

or if not, try the web:
[http://www.scalesolarsystem.66ghz.com/](http://www.scalesolarsystem.66ghz.com/)

~~~
satori99
My favourite one is Sweden.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Solar_System](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Solar_System)

~~~
wikwocket
I thought you meant to type that your favorite one was _in_ Sweden. I see I
was mistaken!

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ChuckMcM
I 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.

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mietek
Similarly, "deadly explosions of massive stars"?

~~~
cheald
As opposed to the less lethal explosions of smaller stars, which are good for
quick tans.

~~~
sageikosa
If a star explodes and its system that has no life, is it "deadly"?

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cheald
Stringently, 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.)

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sageikosa
Except 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.

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51Cards
“I’m convinced that nature is far more imaginative than we are." \- Stamatios
Krimigis

Love that quote.

~~~
eigenbom
"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
Good find, thanks. I thought I had heard it before but a web search came up
empty for me.

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TallGuyShort
It'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!

~~~
swamp40
My understanding is that as soon as the magnetic field shifts, Voyager will be
declared to have "left the solar system".

The solar wind has died down, the cosmic rays have increased (although they
are unexpectedly coming from a single direction), and the magnetic field shift
will be the third and final necessary event.

And they expect it _soon_ (could be months or years).

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quantumpotato_
What theories are out there as to the single-direction?

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datalus
"To all intents, cosmic rays arrive evenly from all directions in the sky, but
this does not necessarily mean their sources are evenly spread around us. More
likely, they are constantly deflected and scattered by magnetic fields in the
galaxy, until any trace of their original motion is lost."[0]

A crude hypothesis would be that there's some sort of magnetic field that is
directing them from a single location. Since we've never been this far before,
its a pretty huge guess...

[0]: [http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/wcosray.html](http://www-
spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/wcosray.html)

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obviouslygreen
Hopefully 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
That 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.

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julianpye
Reports about Voyager at the edge of our solar system always remind me about
the Truman Show, when Truman hits the set's walls...

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grecy
I was just wondering what the general consensus if Voyager 1 simply stops
transmitting data next week. There one minute, gone the next...

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jerf
That it finally kicked the bucket. Every minute it keeps running is a gift. It
certainly won't be pulling into any repair shops any time soon.

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davidw
> 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
My thoughts exactly.

Also: "the spacecraft’s instruments indicated that particles around it were
moving subsonically"

lolwut?

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antoko
Currently 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...](http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/623/1/511/fulltext/61043.text.html)

~~~
nathanb
Interesting, 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
I absolutely didn't downvote you, I fully agree with your point, and was
equally confused by the use those terms in that context.

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ars
"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.

~~~
yread
That's not how science works. Everything we "know" is a model, an
approximation. Model that describes how the world works to some degree.
Molecules aren't rigid balls but a model like that works on some scales. For
protein folding atoms are considered rigid balls because the model works for
what we need it.

All hypothesis are basically models. Later they are confirmed by experiment
and they become a scientific theory. You can definitely draw conclusions from
a model and then verify them with an experiment. Which is just what the
Voyager is doing

~~~
ars
We are using two different meanings of the word model.

You mean model as "description". I meant it as "make a model (eg on a
computer), then see what the model does".

~~~
ollysb
A model in science is a mathematical description that maps inputs to outputs.
Science is an iterative process that first hypothesises a model then tests it
through experimentation. Over time a model may be refined or perhaps
superceeded by a superior model with different foundations. A model then is
never considered 100% accurate for all cases, there is always the potential
for new observations to lie outside the model.

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natch
Seems 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
This was my exact thought too. Makes me wonder if there isn't something else
going on as it seems like such an obvious explanation.

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dmckeon
My 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!

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quackerhacker
I 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.

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Aardwolf
This 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?

~~~
gus_massa
The 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.htm...](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html)

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 ...

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Aardwolf
2038... I hope it's not using 32-bit Unix time.

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michaelsbradley
Could 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_\(plasma\))

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mrbrowning
I'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
They go through self-calibration tests.

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quux
They should have gone with "perverse and often baffling" for their headline.

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moron4hire
What if Voyager 1 is sensing things it's dragging with it?

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michaelfeathers
Again?

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dschiptsov
A wall on which other stars are painted?)

