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UPDATED - - - - FINALLY! New Information from IBEX that continues to verify we are entering a highly magnetized/energetic region of the Fluff!!!
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UPDATE
Jun 15, 2012
Data from NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft indicate that the venerable deep-space explorer has encountered a region in space where the intensity of charged particles from beyond our solar system has markedly increased. Voyager scientists looking at this rapid rise draw closer to an inevitable but historic conclusion - that humanity's first emissary to interstellar space is on the edge of our solar system.
"The latest data indicate that we are clearly in a new region where things are changing more quickly. It is very exciting. We are approaching the solar system's frontier."
This marked increase is one of a triad of data sets which need to make significant swings of the needle to indicate a new era in space exploration. The second important measure from the spacecraft's two telescopes is the intensity of energetic particles generated inside the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles the Sun blows around itself.
[link to www.space-travel.com]
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IBEX’s novel imaging technique has unleashed one surprise after another. Now principal investigator David McComas (Southwest Research Institute) and 10 colleagues have turned IBEX's attention to the Sun's motion through space. It turns out that the Sun is moving through interstellar gas at 52,000 miles (84,000 km) per hour, about 12% slower than previously measured by the Ulysses spacecraft.
So what does the new model look like? IBEX's observations confirm that the Sun is still moving (albeit slowly) through the Local Interstellar Cloud, a fluff of higher density gas roughly 30 light-years across. Combined with a relatively strong interstellar magnetic field, the Sun's slower advance is no longer enough to push interstellar gas into a bow shock. At best, it makes a "bow wave," a region of slightly increased density — more like a fast-moving boat than a fighter jet. This means a significant change in how scientists think about the Sun and its interaction with the stuff beyond its influence.
"It's too early to say exactly what this new data means for our heliosphere. Decades of research have explored scenarios that included a bow shock. That research now has to be redone using the latest data," says McComas.
"Observations of a few astrospheres have shown bow shocks around those stars, but IBEX has shown that our star has a fundamentally different environment surrounding it," says Christina Prested (Boston University), an IBEX scientist not involved in the published study. "These results are very exciting as we can now definitively say what it's like in the neighborhood of our solar system."
[link to www.skyandtelescope.com]
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