Posted on 10/10/2022 2:10:41 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Data from a spacecraft orbiting Earth has revealed ripple structures in the termination shock and heliopause: shifting regions of space that mark one of the boundaries between the space inside the Solar System, and...interstellar space.
...Sun affects the space around it...solar wind, a constant supersonic flow of ionized plasma. It blows out past the planets and the Kuiper Belt, eventually petering out in the great emptiness between the stars.
The point at which this flow falls below the speed at which sound waves can travel through the diffuse interstallar medium is called the termination shock, and the point at which it is no longer strong enough to push back against the very slight pressure of interstellar space is the heliopause.
Both Voyager probes have crossed the heliopause and are, effectively, now cruising through interstellar space, providing us the first in situ measurements of this shifting boundary.
NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX)
IBEX measures energized neutral atoms, which are created when the Sun's solar wind collides with the interstellar wind at the Solar System boundary. Some of those atoms are catapulted further out into space, while others are flung back at Earth. Once the strength of the solar wind that produced them is taken into account, energized neutral particles that return our way can be used to map the shape of the boundary, a bit like cosmic echolocation.
Previous maps of the structure of the heliosphere have relied on long-scale measures of the evolution of solar wind pressure and energetic neutral atom emissions, which resulted in a smoothing of the boundary in both space and time. But in 2014, over a period of roughly six months, the dynamic pressure of the solar wind increased by roughly 50 percent.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencealert.com ...
Pardon me.
Drank some pop.
The brothers need to turn down their car radios.
Well, I’m not getting up to go check it. Probably just the sump pump.
Climate discombobulation! Hello? Bueller?
Ripple in still water
When there is no pebble tossed
Nor wind to blow
Uranus farted.
Galactus approaches.
6-7-4
Up your Haiku game.
Nice.
Sail away, away
Ripples never come back
Gone to the other side
Sail away, away
No, no, no! They have discovered bottles of Ripple floating around at the edge of the solar system!
that would be a T-Rex slowly approaching!
I wonder if Fred Stanford is headed for a launch pad.
I’m hoping it’s the benevolent aliens come to save us from Biden and Putin.
“...the very slight pressure of interstellar space...”
Whuuuut?
Nibiru is returning.
HERE THEY COME!
(those are “bow waves”...)
There’s a ripple which I call a wave
Coming fast from an alien knave
From out past Uranus
Comes the death ray to slay us
Except those who hid out in a cave.
I am more of a Limerick guy. Maybe that will save me.
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