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Voyager 2 Detects Peculiar Solar System Edge
ClickOnThis writes "CNN reports that Voyager 2 has detected evidence of the magnetic edge of the solar system (aka the heliopause) at 76 AU (1 AU = 93 million miles), much closer to the Sun than the location of 85 AU found by Voyager 1. From the article: '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. [...] The researchers think that the heliosphere's asymmetry might be due to a weak interstellar magnetic field pressing inward on the southern hemisphere.'"
I have been living in a bubble all my life.
Could it not simply mean that it changes in size? I'd be surprised if it *didn't* change in size, based on all the variable energy in the solar system. The sun changes, the planets change place, etc.
yadda
That's two data points, and "bulging" implies a highly irregular shape, or at least an even shape that couldn't be accurately modeled by two data points.
Wouldn't it be equally as logical to say that it's just expanding/contracting? How can they know with only two points?
If you haven't foed me yet, what are you waiting for?
...but all that mumbo-jumbo about weak this and that seems really complicated.
Couldn't the inward bulge on the south be because the turtle shell is pushing in on it?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
I'm sorry, I'm not a scientist and perhaps that's why I can't graps how the hell they came to this genius conclusion.
Let's sample a sphere at two pinpoint locations, and make all sorts of conclusions on the shape of an entire hemisphere of it...??? It rained today, and it was sunny yesterday, so that means that there's a 50% chance of it raining? Insufficient data...
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Or it means that the heliopause is collapsing at an alarming rate. In other words, the sky is falling! End of the solar system! Run for your lives!
Hobby Robotics
the question: What does God need with a starship?
How much you guys wanna bet some people will either:
A) Say that this is causing global warming
B) Say that this is being caused by global warming
Chums up, let's do this!
The solar system is collapsing!
It must have started after Voyager I got there, which means it's going *really* fast.
Run everyone, Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun!
A blog about stuff.
"computer, what is the nature of the universe?"
The universe is a spheroid region - 705 meters in diameter...
It's a credit to the teams that these things are still running. I feel like there is an old and new NASA. Imagine a project today to explore the edges of the Solar System (I know Voyagers did more than that but we have to keep it simple today). "Okay boys, now, we don't care what direction you go in, but could you please just not hit anything?" All in all, I really feel for NASA.
If you look at many structures in the universe, there are quite a few that are not spherically symmetrical. So either, we're in an asymmetrical blob, or there's just a more complex symmetry present. This should come as no surprise to the astronomy community, IMHO.
It is interesting, I think. It may give insight into our local neighbourhood.
Mike.
Mmmm......sacrelicious.
North and south also refer to magnetic poles. North is generally assumed to be the positive pole, and south the negative, though when poles flip, as happens on earth (every one million years I think), and the sun (every 11 years or so, sometimes refered to as a period of solar maxima), common usage north and south probably won't switch. Wikipedia has a bit more info.
There's also galactic north and south, which are imaginary axes perpendicular to the the plane of the galaxy. Again, wikipedia has more info.
I'd hazard that what this article refers to as north is probably some assumed "solar north" roughly parallel to Earth's north.
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I've been to the heliopause and all I got was this lousy t-shirt!
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
You're only saying that to get attention. No wonder the parents won't let you play with their kids. :P
En1arge your heli0sphere! With our proven program, you can make your heliosphere larger and thicker in just a few short weeks. Would you like to see results by the end of the first week?... You will... Follow our program, and within just a couple months you can be 9 or more AU larger than when you first started.
...from a far less clueless source.
Here is an illustration of the phenomenon.
-mcgrew
Keynote, not PowerPoint.
-- Tim Buchheim
Can someone explain the slew of Global Warming related snarks and references? I mean, what the hell is similar between this and the other?
Global warming, we have a well understood and physically justified model whose conclusions are gradually confirmed by more and more evidence.
Heliopause, we have a naive model based on little evidence, whose conclusion - uniformity of the Heliopause based on lack of apparent altering factors - is refuted by two pieces of probably not very significant evidence. We have no historical evidence of how the heliopause has altered in the past for us to compare our data.
Global warming, we have a reasonable selection of known factors, and by seeing what effects they have on our model, we find that we cannot statistically reject GH gases as a significant issue.
Heliopause, we have almost no known factors that can cause this distortion, and on the basis of this, we only know that the present factors appear insufficient based on our conventional assumptions.
Global warming, we have a broad scientific consensus shown in all peer reviewed publications, questioned by only a few with dubious records of intellectual integrity and whose arguments have been shown to have hilarious errors over and over again.
Heliopause, we have no consensus, because this is a new question that no one has tried to answer yet. All anyone can do is throw hypotheses up in the air. And no, 'human effect' is not one of them because the Earth goes around and around so any effect on the heliopause would be averaged out, and because we don't exert any measurable influence that could affect such a massive thing. (Inverse square law applies, and everything)
So, in summary, I don't get the joke. If this is at all like climatology, then the analogy would be with climatology in the 19th century, where we've only just begun to try to understand the weather. In that case, history shows waiting a few years will not be enough. A century, maybe...
I forgot whose talk I heard yesterday (they changed the speaking order; session was SH22A) but basically: V1 passed the termination shock (NOT the heliopause; summary is wrong) at the end of 2004; this was the big announcement at last spring AGU meeting. Before that, they were seeing foreshock signatures (plasma and magnetic). V2 is now seeing those signatures, but seeing them a fair bit closer in than V1 was observing them. So, V2 has not passed the heliopause, nor even the termination shock, but appears to be nearing the TS closer to the Sun than V1 did. This is a surprising/interesting result, but not huge overturning of theory or anything. Learning the structure of the outer regions of the Solar System is the whole point of these exercises (and the upcoming IBEX mission).
I am quite certain that the solar system is in FACT banana shaped.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
...it's due to the Sun's motion through the galaxy
Unless the compression of the heliopause is on the leading edge relative to the sun's motion through the galaxy, this can be safely ruled out. This would also imply some hitherto undetected galactic medium causing a braking effect; surely any non-magnetic influence would affect solid matter as well, and cause the galaxy's rotation to slow over time (unless the medium rotates with the galaxy, in which case the motion of the medium relative to the sun is zero and braking should apply equally to all sides...the effect of motion again cancels out, so we're back to where we started).
perhaps extrasolar winds which remain undetected
Maybe, but without identifying a source of those winds its impossible to explain the uneven shape: what lies in that direction that could produce such a powerful effect? That's not to exlude the possibility, but it seems less likely than the weak magnetic field's influence, given what we do know about charged particles.
or the bubble is variable like the solar wind itself
That's probably true for small differences over time, but we're talking about an 11% variation. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure that any variation in solar activity that could cause that kind of change in the space of a few years would be detectable from observation. They probably considered this, checked, and found no link.
or maybe even gravitational tides due to the orbiting planets are influencing its shape.
On the plane of the elliptic where the planets magnetic fields and gravity have most influence that might make sense, but these are the polar regions; why would gravitational tides affect one pole one way, and the other pole the other way when the mass is distributed more or less evenly between them (gravity always pulls in, remember)? Besides, the particles involved already have the velocity to escape the sun's gravity, so even Jupiter's gravitational influence would have negligable effect. Its also known that charged particles are deflected by the Van Allen belt, while larger objects plow straight through because of gravity; magnetic fields are far more significant than gravity in this case.
there's so little to go on that a lot of rank speculation is required.
I'm not claiming we know everything (far from it), but we can use what we do know to eliminate what doesn't make sense. Put it this way: if I can point out the flaws with what you suggest with my meagre knowledge of astrophysics, the people who do it for a living are probably way ahead of both of us.
Perhaps a series of probes need to be sent out to the region of the Kuiper Belt to study the phenomenon more closely.
I agree with you 100% there. There is definitely someting interesting going on, but I suspect the explanation is more obvious than extraordinary.
Blank until