We Have Finally Sailed Beyond the Solar System
Via the Atlantic, a wonderfully reliable fountain of space news, here is the audio evidence that convinced scientists that Voyager 1, the spacecraft launched 36 years ago, has finally sailed past Uranus and out of the solar system altogether.
The atmosphere in the “interstellar medium” is different than the atmosphere marked by our sun’s solar winds, and so, when the audio of a March 2012 explosion on the sun reached the Voyager in April (traveling 12 billion miles to do so), NASA noticed that the pitch was different; they concluded that “spacecraft was bathed in plasma more than 40 times denser than what they had encountered in the outer layer of the heliosphere. Density of this sort is to be expected in interstellar space.”
This is incredible space news, more than making up for this little frog guy who accidentally got launched alongside a spaceship last week. I’m so excited for the Voyager! So are Neil deGrasse Tyson, LeVar Burton, and more. On board the Voyager is the “Golden Record,” a time capsule containing 115 images from our planet, natural sounds (“surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales”) and “spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages.” I eagerly await the receipt of this Record by our inevitable Jellyfish Overlords.
Photo via wstera2/flickr