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First Images of Solar System's Invisible Frontier

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the champagne-method-to-science dept.

FiReaNGeL writes an unexpected side-effect from NASA's STEREO spacecraft has allowed scientists to see a much more well-defined picture of the boundary of our solar system. "The twin STEREO spacecraft were launched in 2006 into Earth's orbit about the sun to obtain stereo pictures of the sun's surface and to measure magnetic fields and ion fluxes associated with solar explosions. Between June and October 2007, however, the suprathermal electron sensor in the IMPACT (In-situ Measurements of Particles and CME Transients) suite of instruments on board each STEREO spacecraft detected neutral atoms originating from the same spot in the sky: the shock front and the heliosheath beyond, where the sun plunges through the interstellar medium."

6 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Acronym in an Acronym? by bunratty · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Meh. It doesn't even recurse like GNU's Not Unix.

    --
    What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
  2. Woooooosh by halsver · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not the sound the Solar system makes as it travels through the galaxy, but the sound of this article going over my head.

    So this boundry is what exactly? The limit to which the solar winds reach out from the Sun and the interaction that they have when they hit the expansive nothing out there?

    --
    Roughly half my comments are never submitted. You may be reading the better half...
    1. Re:Woooooosh by lazyDog86 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Arrrrgghhh! One should refresh before posting if one does not wish to repeat someone else's joke. Go ahead mod me down, I can take it.

      --
      my insights may be modded Funny, but at least some of my jokes are modded Insightful
    2. Re:Woooooosh by khallow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Interstellar space isn't empty. You have nebula and lots of (hundreds of billions?) stars spewing particles just like the Sun does, etc. So there is something for the solar wind to run into.

  3. Re:Sloar system's velocity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Who's the dumbass who modded this as troll?

  4. Re:Math Quiz by ceoyoyo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    c = (k p / Ï)^1/2

    Put in the numbers and get your answer. The speed of sound in space works out to around 300 m/s in these parts.

    Or were you under the impression that sound isn't transmitted in space? Sound we can hear isn't, but the ambient gas in space certainly does transmit disturbances, and will let you know if something passing through it exceeds the speed of sound by forming a shock wave.