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Voyager II could pass beyond the outermost layer of our solar system, | |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 97645 Canada 05/25/2006 12:16 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | (SPACE.com) -- Voyager II could pass beyond the outermost layer of our solar system, called the "termination shock," sometime within the next year, NASA scientists announced at a media teleconference Tuesday. The milestone, which comes about a year after Voyager 1's crossing, comes earlier than expected and suggests to scientists that the edge of the shock is about one billion miles closer to the sun in the southern region of the solar system than in the north. This implies that the heliosphere, a spherical bubble of charged low-energy particles created by our sun's solar wind, is irregularly shaped, bulging in the northern hemisphere and pressed inward in the south. Scientists determined that Voyager I was approaching the termination shock when it began detecting charged particles that were being pushed back toward the sun by charged particles coming from outside our solar system. This occurred when Voyager 1 was about 85 AU from the sun. (Full story) One AU is the distance between the Earth and the sun, or 93 million miles. [link to www.space.com] Last Edited by Phennommennonn on 04/12/2012 11:14 AM |
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