Simply in time for Halloween, scientists have found one thing spooky and unusual occurring on the fringe of the solar system: The heliopause — the boundary between the heliosphere (the bubble of solar wind encompassing the solar system) and the interstellar medium (the fabric between the celebrities) seems to be rippling and creating indirect angles in an surprising method.
The overall idea that the heliopause adjustments form shouldn’t be new; over the previous decade, researchers have decided that it’s not static. They made this discovery utilizing knowledge from Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, the one two spacecraft to exit the heliosphere to this point, in addition to NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) satellite, which research the emissions of energetic impartial atoms (ENAs) which can be created when solar winds and the interstellar medium work together.
“The Voyager spacecraft present the one direct, in situ measurement of the places of those boundaries. However solely at one level in space and time,” Eric Zirnstein, a space physicist at Princeton College, wrote in an e mail to Vice (opens in new tab). IBEX helps spherical out that knowledge.
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Scientists have used the info to create fashions that predict how the heliopause adjustments. In a nutshell, solar winds and the interstellar medium push and pull on one another to create an ever-moving boundary.
However current analysis into the heliopause has surfaced knowledge that contradict earlier findings. Over a interval of a number of months in 2014, IBEX captured the brightening of ENAs that indicated asymmetries within the heliopause, and the group later realized these asymmetries have been incongruous with the fashions, Vice famous.
Moreover, in reviewing knowledge from the journeys of Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, the scientists found that the heliopause modified dramatically in a really quick time period. That helps to clarify why there was such a big hole between the 2 probes’ entrances into interstellar space, which occurred in 2012 and 2018, respectively. However that sort of motion by the heliopause additionally clashes with the fashions.
In a paper printed Oct. 10 within the journal Nature Astronomy (opens in new tab), the researchers known as these discrepancies “intriguing and doubtlessly controversial.” They plan to proceed learning the heliopause, hoping to realize extra perception from NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, a new-and-improved satellite that may detect ENAs and is scheduled to launch in 2025, Zirnstein advised Vice.
Till then, we will solely ponder this eerie phenomenon taking place within the haunting depths of the solar system.
Comply with Stefanie Waldek on Twitter @StefanieWaldek. Comply with us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
