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Voyager 2 Set to Reach Termination Shock
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "A computer model simulation developed at UC Riverside has predicted that in late 2007 to early 2008, the interplanetary spacecraft Voyager 2 will cross the termination shock, the spherical shell around the solar system that marks where the solar wind slows down to subsonic speed. At the termination shock, located at 7-8.5 billion miles from the sun, the solar wind is decelerated to less than the speed of sound. The boundary of the termination shock is not fixed, however, but wobbly, fluctuating in both time and distance from the sun, depending on solar activity. Because of this fluctuation, the spacecraft is also predicted to cross the boundary again in middle 2008. The article abstract is available from The Astrophysical Journal."
this is the kind of thing scientists predict all the time and observe in lab experiments... but this device is actually GOING to the edge of a solar system... it's someplace human made instruments haven't been. Science at it's very purest form, simply going and observing something nobody has actually seen before.
Why do you go on vacation to foreign places.. aren't postcards and Discovery channel good enough? It's a whole lot different to say "we were there" than guessing what it would be like from a long distance.