NASA Is Not Sure if Voyager 1 Has Left The Solar System
Voyager 1 Has Left the Solar System, Says New Study, University of Maryland
“Voyager 1 appears to have at long last left our solar system and entered interstellar space, says a University of Maryland-led team of researchers. Carrying Earthly greetings on a gold plated phonograph record and still-operational scientific instruments – including the Low Energy Charged Particle detector designed, built and overseen, in part, by UMD’s Space Physics Group – NASA’s Voyager 1 has traveled farther from Earth than any other human-made object. And now, these researchers say, it has begun the first exploration of our galaxy beyond the Sun’s influence.”
NASA Statement on Competing Models to Explain Voyager 1 Data
“Other models envision the interstellar magnetic field draped around our solar bubble and predict that the direction of the interstellar magnetic field is different from the solar magnetic field inside. By that interpretation, Voyager 1 would still be inside our solar bubble. The fine-scale magnetic connection model will become part of the discussion among scientists as they try to reconcile what may be happening on a fine scale with what happens on a larger scale.”
There is only one scientist that can proclaim Voyager 1 has left the Solar System, and that scientist is Ed Stone.
No single person can determine whether or not Voyager 1 has left the solar system. Scientific consensus will determine that.
You make it sound like Bolden should decide the answer.
This is science. The Maryland group is outside the Voyager team and can publish their interpretation. Ed Stone and Co. as the Voyager Science Team have a greater obligation to get it right. We’ve enjoyed sharing Voyager’s explorations for 36 years and can wait to see what comes next.
Agreed. Mr. Stone has connections and responsibilities both inside NASA and out, so he habitually treads carefully.
Why don’t we get a couple of political figures to adopt a position one way or the other? For example, we could say that conservatives believe Voyager hasn’t left the solar system, and liberals believe it has. Or vice versa. We could spend endless hours of talk radio time and gigabytes of server storage defending our positions and accusing the other side of all kinds of hidden agendas and ulterior motives. Then we could pass (or block passage of) all sorts of laws related to one view or the other. Maybe even come up with some kind of interstellar treaty which various nations could ratify or opt out of, depending on their political leanings. We could group the scientists into “pro-interstellar” and “anti-interstellar,” or “interstellar-deniers,” or “interstellar skeptics,” etc, and each side could castigate the others, impugn their motives, question their scientific credentials, etc. That should easily decide the issue once and for all, just the way it has for climate change.
Haha, just in case the politicians ran out of things to oppose each other on.