Posted on 12/05/2012 9:41:12 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
An artist's concept of NASA's Voyager spacecraft, which is now about 11 billion miles from the sun, NASA said.
(CNN) -- Are we there yet? If you're Voyager 1 and you're looking for a spot beyond the end of our solar system, the answer is no.
NASA officials have been saying for months that Voyager 1 is almost there when it comes to interstellar space as it continues the longest road trip in the history of mankind.
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 took off 16 days apart in 1977, and Voyager 1 is now about 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun.
On Monday, project officials said new information sent back from the ship yielded a surprising result.
"If we would have only looked at particle data alone, we would have said we're out of the solar system," said Tom Krimigis, a scientist from Johns Hopkins University who examines data on low-energy charged particles. "But nature is very imaginative, and Lucy pulled up the football again."
The Voyager team believes this region is where lines of magnetic particles from the solar system are meeting particles from interstellar space.
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
PING
V’Ger
Unexpected
Well, I've said it now, haven't I?
/johnny
I can't stand more unexpected=drink.
/johnny
Amazing that the solar powered spacecrafts are still operating. Wonder if they still send signals and probably takes several minutes for the signal to reach earth if so. I think the light from Sun takes 9 minutes to reach earth.
what is the big deal...our debt is now larger than the universe
Rethinking the rethinking which was rethought after everything previously thought was previously rethought.
It will take a LONG time to travel 16 TRILLION miles, indeed! Of course, that does not include 84 trillion in unfunded liabilities.....
There are some scientists who started on Voyager shortly after college, and have spent their whole career on the project.
The Voyagers are nuclear powered craft. Where they are now, the sun is so far away that it only appears as a slightly brighter star than the rest.
It’s powered by Plutonium, And the signal flight time is about 17 hours.
Actually $16 Trillion is our GDP every year.
It is the unfunded liabilities estimated in the range of $80-100 Trillion which is the real big deal.
Perhaps at the end voyager will come across a big painted wall with the stars as little lights on it? :)
“The Voyager team believes this region is where lines of magnetic particles from the solar system are meeting particles from interstellar space.”
So in other words, they’ve entered the heliopause, but it’s bigger than they expected? Once they get to the midpoint, the field lines will reverse.
Ah, the “Truman Show” cosmological model!
Err, pretty sure they’re nuclear, and the signal takes about 19 hours.
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