Voyager 1 Detects Weirdness At Solar System Edge

Greetings, ATS!

So, it seems Voyager 1 is encountering some high strangeness as it prepares to leave the solar system.

Now, in a new paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, scientists analyzing data streaming from the spacecraft have uncovered a small mystery right at the solar system's magnetic boundary with the interstellar medium.

Voyager 1 is currently almost 122 AU from the sun, and scientists are watching two types of data closely to try and determine when the spacecraft leaves the solar system. But as they have monitored the data, they've come across something surprising.

In 2004, scientists realized that Voyager 1 had traveled through the "termination shock" -- a region where the solar wind begins to interact with the interstellar medium. Then, in 2010, the probe crossed into a stagnation region just beyond the termination shock known as the "heliosheath" -- this is where the solar wind slows to zero and the magnetic field becomes compressed and begins to fluctuate.

According to theory, as the magnetic field begins to fluctuate, the number of high-energy cosmic rays should decrease inside the heliosheath -- charged cosmic rays entering the solar system should become scattered by the magnetic fluctuations, decreasing the number of detections by Voyager 1. Looking at data through 2010, the researchers actually found the opposite to be true -- as the magnetic field became more chaotic, the number of high-energy particles increased.

What's the reason for this weirdness? According to an AGU press release, the researchers suspect that these magnetic fluctuations are somehow energizing charged particles within the heliosheath, boosting the number of high-energy particle detections.

Take a look at these charts that show the rapid increase in certain particles and the rapid decrease in other particles.

Increased particles:

Decreased particles

What does this mean?

This research comes during a very important year for Voyager 1. 2012 particle data from the probe suggests a profound change in its surroundings. The number of high-energy particle detections (from interstellar space) have increased, whereas the number of lower-energy particle detections (from the solar wind) have dropped off a cliff (see graphs below). So now everyone is asking the question: has Voyager 1 officially entered interstellar space? We probably won't have to wait too long to find out.

I think this is terribly exciting, and I can't wait until Voyager 1 is definitely entered interstellar space. Will anything happen? I don't know....but it should be interesting!

source

well,me for one hopes v-ger doesn't come back to earth in a thousand years all pissed off!
i don't think leonard nemoy will be around to fix the problem!!!!
but seriously,that cool stuff.
god only knows,er um, v-ger only knows whats out there!

Exciting stuff, sometimes I wish I could go with them coz I'd love to know whats out there.

WARNING!!!
We should take note what they tried to warn us about on StarTrek.
Voyager, having been modified, has become God like, and returns to earth looking for its creator.

reply to post by smyleegrl


Very cool post OP. This kinda thing gets me quite excited too.

S&F!

Rev

So cool that we are actually about to get a manmade object out into interstellar space! Good stuff OP
Used to be one of my favourite little thoughts that maybe this was what ET was waiting for, I guess we'll see soon enough.

I don't get it. Hope there won't be a test. But anyway, I guess that since the V'ger is 122 AU's from us (1 AU=

93,000,000 miles in KM=I don't know metric chit) It is at the edge of our solar systems interference and at the

"outer effects" of the void between stars. V'ger might be all charged up once it hit that boundry and its showing

buy its reaction to interstellar space. Even between stars (in the vacum of space) there's stuff. Some of that stuff

might not beable to "enter into contained solar systems", but..when an object leaves the "shell" of its solar system

it go's bat chit!

I say it's going to crash into a wall; in the vein of Jim Carrey's boat in The Truman Show. Perhaps this will happen on December 21st. That could cause a societal shift back here at home.

reply to post by Josephus


I like the way you think!

Star for you.

Rev

Like a fish taking the first step out of the ocean.

Originally posted by Josephus
I say it's going to crash into a wall; in the vein of Jim Carrey's boat in The Truman Show. Perhaps this will happen on December 21st.

That could cause a societal shift back here at home.

Since it takes considerable amount of time for any signal from the probe to propagate back to Earth i really dont think December 21st 2012 has any relevance. 122Au is quite some ways away. Dont see the connection myself. I like your Truman Show analogy through!

I see it this way our solar system is kind of like a cell and Proxima Centauri is just another cell a little further away. Us clever Monkeys just managed to breach our cell. Quite an accomplishment for the slave race that we were originally designed to be. I think we have potencial! Lets just hope some of the bigger kids in the neighborhood dont take notice.

reply to post by andy06shake



The antibiotics will come to suppress us!


EDIT: Ah, you're using cell in a prison context rather than a human biological one. My bad!

Originally posted by shadowland8
reply to post by andy06shake

 

The antibiotics will come to suppress us!

EDIT: Ah, you're using cell in a prison context rather than a human biological one. My bad!

edit on 31/10/12 by shadowland8 because: (no reason given)

I was kind off meaning both.

Originally posted by andy06shake

Since it takes considerable amount of time for any signal from the probe to propagate back to Earth i really dont think December 21st 2012 has any relevance.

Does it, by any chance, take 3 days? That would reference the 3 days of darkness

reply to post by andy06shake


Surprisingly I believe it only takes about 33 hours for the radio signal from Voyager I to reach Earth. Although, they're saying it will enter the interstellar medium (or crash into our solar system's thin candy shell) between 2012 and 2015 so it's a fairly wide margin and I think probably more of a gradual transition then a definite border.

Time to be Transformed my friends,
as we "Voyage" to our solar systems ends,
we find this is where our minds renewing begins...
Electro-magnetic heliospheric particles in the winds~

Thanks for the info

∞LOVE
mayallsoulsbefree∞

Originally posted by chrismir

Originally posted by andy06shake

Since it takes considerable amount of time for any signal from the probe to propagate back to Earth i really dont think December 21st 2012 has any relevance.

Does it, by any chance, take 3 days? That would reference the 3 days of darkness

Let´s do some simple math:
It takes roughly 8 minutes for sunlight to reach Earth (radio waves also travel at this speed);
Distance from Sun to earth is 1 AU
Voyager is 122 AU away
122 X 8 = 976 minutes
976 divided by 60 = 16.26 hours
This is how long it should take the signal from Voyager to reach Earth.

93 million miles and we can still comunicate with it? wtf i cant even get a good reception on my not so smart phone ^^. this is just awesome, i wish it had cameras on it, and if it does and they didnt tell us, i hope they show us in the future. the thing could be flying by all kinds of "space creatures" not aliens, but like giant jelly fish or something and we wouldnt even know, hell it could have been eatin by one and is in the belly thats why its going crazy its getting digested lol. i also wish we made like 40 of them and sent them off in all directions. do these things have some kind of steering eq on board or do they just fly out straight line and hope for best? if so im surprised how empty space is then, that they are still going straight lol. just imagine that thing is flying through space junk/dust thats billions of years old probably older than our planet even. crazy just crazy.

another thought, what if its a bubble and we pop it. DOH!

reply to post by Blastoff


Yeah you're right I just got the answer from ask yahoo but they mistakenly gave the round trip time as opposed to the one way. I do not know if Voyager requires a query from NASA before it sends data back to us if this is the case than a question asked of Voyager will take 34h:05m:19s to be answered. If Voyager sends it's messages independently then you half it and you get it in 17h2m40s.

JPL has this info on a ticker with voyager's distance from Earth and from the Sun as well as the same information for Voyager 2

Voyager: The interstellar Mission
About 2/3 of the way down on the right side.

I really like to see and heard about this stuff - It is all quite exciting, and to think we are part of mankind historical moment when first man-made object travels the space between stars.

Man can do some truly remarkable things –We need to do great things more often instead of trying to kill each other.

S&F for you good Lady.