Slashdot Mirror
Giant Ribbon Discovered At Edge of Solar System
beadwindow writes "NASA's IBEX (Interstellar Boundary Explorer) spacecraft has made the first all-sky maps of the heliosphere and the results have taken researchers by surprise. The maps are bisected by a bright, winding ribbon of unknown origin: 'This is a shocking new result,' says IBEX principal investigator Dave McComas of the Southwest Research Institute. 'We had no idea this ribbon existed — or what has created it. Our previous ideas about the outer heliosphere are going to have to be revised.' Another NASA scientist notes, '"This ribbon winds between the two Voyager spacecraft and was not observed by either of them.'"
startrekgenerations
Bill Gates thought that he was being innovative. Who'd have guessed that God came up with it first?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
The universe patched to 1.2, introducing Ribbon controls, because they collapse and expand in a visually appealing fashion. This helps the overlords better manage their multi-dimension MDI.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
No, it's pink... the universe is celebrating National Breast Cancer Awareness Month!
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
We already KNEW about this, it is called the Great Galactic Barrier
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Galactic_barrier
It's just the little one for each solar system, and these guys get federal grant money!
I predict that further study will reveal the ribbon encircles a giant gift-wrapped present under an enormous Christmas tree. These were not discovered previously, since the present was hidden in the cosmic closet ...
It's good we discovered this early on. If we were already launching interstellar ships, there's a very real danger that at least one crew member's latent ESP abilities would start to run amok after their ship tried entering the ribbon. And, even worse, it'd probably be one of the ship captain's oldest friends.
#DeleteChrome
And no, not the Nexus. Classic Trek. The barrier at the edge of the galaxy. And like all good barriers they're designed to either keep something out, or to keep something in...
I suppose the implication of Voyager not detecting it is that it wasn't there then. Guess the EBE's have noticed us after all.
Oh yeah, for those who haven't caught on? :-) :-) :-)
Hey... makes as much sense as any other religion. Free sainthood for early supporters!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
it's not a quantum leap to assume that other solar systems have them too. I wonder what more information we'll be able to learn about our system, and therefore be able to infer about other systems, due to this discovery.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
FTA:
It looks like the ribbon is a side effect of the interaction between the galactic magnetic field and the heliosphere. It's possible that the interaction between the two causes particles to either collect in that region or direct those particles from that region toward Earth.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
It's just a warp signature. "They" weren't ready to make first contact.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/71/Ringworld(1stEd).jpg
...just don't pull on either end!
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
At last, we now know why the solar system is immune to status effects.
Hey, Uncle Ike here. Sorry about that. It was pretty fucking hilarious, though.
I want my menus back!
This ribbon thing is driving me nuts!
But you just gotta have another sigarette
Ribbons, Spheres...
We're all in the middle of a cosmic rhythmic gymnastics competition!
And so begins Louis, Nessus, Teela, and Speaker's journey...
no, it is the red string of fate.
The obvious answer is - Christmas is coming and the ribbon has to come from somewhere!
What, can't a solar system look cute for photo day?
that is a stargate wormhole that has gone bad. OR they are trying to dial Destiny and need a lot of power.
"Don't open before christmas"
....at the edge of the solar system.
This "ribbon" escaped detection by two former Voyager spacecraft, and is only now being detected by some new spacecraft that happened to be looking for something different. This "ribbon" is a ribbon by some specific property.
It's amazing, to me, how what we see is influenced to a great extent by what we're looking for. The manifold possibilities the universe presents to us!
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
Are you praying god or the nature ?
If so, you should be more polite...
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
While the ribbon's perpendicular orientation to the galactic magnetic field is interesting, I'd like to know the relative orientations of the galactic and solar system ecliptics. If for no other reason than to have a frame of reference. I'm guessing that the galactic field is roughly perpendicular to its ecliptic (right hand rule?) but not necessarily to our direction of penetration with our heliopause.
Could this be the cause of the Long-delayed echoes?
Bruce Perens.
Some of us are aware of breast all year long.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
Obviously, it's Miss Piggy's hair ribbon.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Worked for Ms. Pacman
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
You know, it's not nice to take a picture of God with his pants unzipped... Those scientists should be ashamed of themselves!
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I dedicate this to the story:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbt30UnzRWw
Table-ized A.I.
Meep!
All hail his noodly appendage.
Read what I mean, not what I wrote.
This is exactly the wake you'd expect to be produced by a Vogon fleet.
"Please wear this ribbon on your planetary system in order to help us raise awareness. Awareness is such a precious commodity in galaxies of all colors, shapes and sizes, that we feel it only proper to honor the awareness that is within us all by taking this opportunity to mark those systems with nascent awarenesses with a ribbon. Hopefully by comparing our pre-aware planetary systems we can come to appreciate our own awareness and the source of that awareness, whatever form you may believe that it takes. Remember, it takes a spiral arm to raise a planetary system. Thank you again for raising awareness with this ribbon."
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
It just means that life, the universe, and everything is a gift.
Seems God is AFK and we are seeing the screen saver.
Of course, the Hydrus Blast seems to have given us a miss, so I'm not sure what long-term implications this has.
Now we have a good reason to send some more Voyager probes out. The last two were certainly worth the cost, and it'd probably be a lot cheaper to build and launch a comparable probe today than it was when the first two were launched.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Were Douglas Adams still among us, he'd perhaps remind us that it could be a highway. Worse still, it could be a highway under construction.
How are you planning to generate 1.21 gigawatts in outer space?! I'm sorry. But the only power source capable of generating 1.21 gigawatts of electricity is a bolt of lightning.
I use friend/foe to signal strong [dis]agreement instead of mod points. What else are f/f good for?
I lost teh bow.
Halp me find it.
-Ceilin Cat
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Would these possibly be some sort of 'northern lights' phenomena? If the earth's magnetic field generates a phenomena at a planetary scale, why not a solar system generating a similar field that interacts with galactic particles?
or a hair on the lens...
Dyson Sphere in the making.
Therefore no reason to suppose they exist.
If I understand the article correctly, Voyager 1 passed right above the ribbon and Voyager 2 passed just below the ribbon. Years ago NASA used Jupiter's gravity to send Voyager 1 above the plane of the solar system and Neptune's gravity to send Voyager 2 below the plane of the solar system, leading to both spacecraft just missing the ribbon.
Maybe it was a mistake to send both spacecraft out of the ecliptic plane. Does anyone know the benefit NASA saw from sending both spacecraft out of the solar plane?
I bet some environmentalist will come up with the idea that we're somehow responsible for that rip in the heliosphere.
It's protecting the penguin colonies on Pluto, of course.
but that raises new questions like...
Does that mean microsoft monopoly extends beyond our first impressions?
Is the solar system in the midst of an upgrade process to Universe OS version 2010. Is the upgrade safe? If not, I definitely hope for my sake they have a backup
but Darn! couldn't they stay away from ribbons... what's with people everywhere... can't they have a classic menu interface?
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
Bill knows and has always known that he's not inventing anything and he never has. He's quite proud of the fact. He's a pirate in the literal, not the BSA sense. As long as you're a "Windows shop" all your base are belong to him, and that causes him no end of glee.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Here is another article, with brief explanations about the heliosphere
...that it wasn't there before. We tend to think of the universe as pretty static, sometimes, and look for answers as if the questions never change. But what if this just showed up? Would we worry? What it if were headed this way?
"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake."...Tyler Durden
touche
Asking people to think is like asking them to buy you a new car
science tells you how
religion tells you why
science tells you how the world works
religion tells you how to live your life
if you reject all traditional religion's codes of conduct, that doesn't mean you are nonreligious, it just means you follow your own unique religion. if you claim to follow no code of conduct, this is a religion as well. no, i'm not being lose with my semantics. rather, you are being phobic of a harmless word: "religion". don't be phobic in your conception of what religion really means: relax, its part of human experience, always was, and always will be
of course, you're not alone in your transgression: plenty of religious folk miss the point about science, and think it somehow treads on science's turf
genuine religion answers questions science can never answer. genuine science answers questions religion can never answer. science and religion never meet
you lose when you begin to answer scientific questions with religion, or religious questions with science
how peaceful and prosperous a society is is pretty much directly proportional to how many people get that essential separation about science and religion in their cognition
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Its just that the veil of the suns atmosphere seems to be way different than all largely accepted theories.
Its not unknown dammit. Its just different. You all should relate.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
Well I had no idea our sun generated a massive magnetic field. Okay, I have a theory that's going to blow your freaking minds! This story plus the magnetic current story and other recent magnetism stories here have made me wonder...is the magnetic field from the sun screwing with the magnetic field on Earth inside the bermuda triangle and causing compasses to mess up and all that? Or perhaps whatever is causing this ribbon, assuming it's an outside source, is getting through and hitting earth in the bermuda triangle. It could be some odd particle interaction that we know nothing about yet but disrupts magnetic fields. I hope they look into this!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
SHAZAM!
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
I prefer the true word of Dog: "Throw the ball! Throw the ball! Throw the ball!"
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
Is it a ribbon, or the hem of The Great White Handkerchief?
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
No it's yellow as in
"Tie a yellow ribbon round the Yggdrasil"
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Sol, when the first nuclear explosion occurred, released a large snezonic boom. This is where the word "Sneeze" comes from.
After that, there were a few more. One blew all of the oxygen away from Mars. Another left a bunch of particles in Earth's atmosphere, effectively ending the reign of the dinosaurs.
If you people would just think about this, GHHHHAWD!
*snort*
religion tells you how to live your life
...
you are being phobic of a harmless word: "religion"
No, that certainly doesn't sound like a harmless word to me... Quite the opposite. Reminds me of one of my favorite quotations.
Morality means doing what is right regardless of what you are told. Religion means doing what you are told regardless of what is right.
Religion is always about something else telling you how to live your life and what thoughts are right. In addition, this "something else" is an unproven, supernatural entity.
if you reject all traditional religion's codes of conduct, that doesn't mean you are nonreligious, it just means you follow your own unique religion. if you claim to follow no code of conduct, this is a religion as well.
Now you are horribly mixing religion, philosophy and morals together as they all meant the same things. They are different words for a reason: They have different meanings.
how peaceful and prosperous a society is is pretty much directly proportional to how many people get that essential separation about science and religion in their cognition
It is true but it is also funny that separation of the two also directly correlates with how loosely people let religion dictate their life in a given society.
If that sucker is yellow and vibrating in such a way that it produces something that sounds eerily like Tony Orlando, we're in trouble!
Hey, give Red Dwarf some props as well!
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Sadly, this is Slashdot at its finest.
This ribbon reminds me of many stories on the now defunct Spiritweb, talking about the solar system entering a ribbon of energy particles in recent times, which accelerates our understanding of the universe. Basically, this is a cyclical happening about (every 25.000 years or something IIRC) based on the Solar System's orbit within the Galaxy. Quite startling to read about this now, and if this ribbon is stationary compared to the solar system, is 1-0 to Spiritweb channelings/rantings.
The channelings even mentioned this would soon be discovered by scientists, but I didn't pay too much attentioned that then..
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Georgia-Pacific has it spot on if the spirit of awareness month is to irritate individuals into action. The breast cancer-aware Quilted Northern toilet paper packages contain rolls of diminished width and I've been inspired into submitting feedback of disdain via the Contact Us form on the Georgia-Pacific website.
"So long, and thanks for all the fish"?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I may have missed a previous comment but have the theorists considered that possibly when both Voyager spacecraft went beyond the solar system they poked a hole causing this phenomena? The article does say it seems to be between where both of the Voyager spacecraft exited the solar system. It would be a sick fate if they cause a reaction that would destroy said universe?
..single one of these photos..
Oh, dammit Johnson, will you get your finger off the lens please?"