Astronomers from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) measured the existence of active wavy particles at the edge of the solar system using data from the Voyager probe, and found that the pressure at the far edge of our celestial system was higher than we expected.

Jamie Rankin, an astrophysicist at Princeton University, said that the results of the study showed that other factors that might cause stress had not been considered.

Perhaps, the whole particle swarm has not been considered. Maybe it's just a little more active than people. Researchers have many possible explanations that need to be explored and verified in future research.

Although the new discovery itself is interesting enough, the process and way of exploring it really constitute the fascinating side of scientific research.

When the solar wind-shaped plasma is emitted from our sun, it will form a "bubble", which we call the heliosphere. At a distance of 654.38+0.4 billion kilometers from the star, the solar wind has actually exhausted its strength as charged particles rapidly decelerate to subsonic speed.

The edge of the bubble is called the solar wind sheath, which is an area where the density of charged particles decreases and the magnetic field weakens.

Beyond this messy boundary is a thin shell called the top of the solar wind layer. In this region, the plasma fog is blown away by the sun's trickle, and when our star moves in space, it is driven by the subtle influence of our galactic neighbors.

In order to maintain this "pause", the pressure pushed in by the local interstellar space and the pressure pushed out by the solar sheath must be balanced. However, it is not easy to know exactly what it looks like. We can make a model to estimate, but no model is better than conclusive evidence.

Fortunately, we happened to have two probes passing through this part of the solar system. Look at the pictures of NASA below and see how they fit together.

(Image from Goddard Space Flight Center/Mary Pat Hribik-Keith)

Voyager 1 is about 20 billion kilometers away from us, and it is actually outside the wilderness that we think of as interstellar space. Its companion Voyager 2 followed closely, just at the end of the exit.

They can't tell us more information about the space pressure in this area directly, but the recent solar activity provides an opportunity to solve this problem in a place called GMIR.

Rankin said: "The time of this event is very unique, because we saw it just after Voyager 1 entered the local interstellar space."

"Although this is the first event seen by Voyager, we can continue to look at more data to understand how things in the solar sheath and interstellar space have changed over time."

Solar activity is actually a cry to space. It throws out particle pulses and growls far away. This cry reached the Sun Sheath in 20 12, when Voyager 2 was watching and listening. About three months later, Voyager 1 also felt its influence.

Through observation, the researchers calculated that the pressure at the boundary is about 267 MPa, which is definitely a very small part of the atmospheric pressure we feel on the earth.

This may be a relatively small squeeze, but the researchers are still surprised.

Rankin said: "Adding up the known parts in previous studies, we find that our new pressure value is still greater than that measured at present."

The team can also calculate the speed of sound waves passing through this medium -3 14 km/s. Or faster than sound travels in our own atmosphere 1000 times.

There is another surprise. The intensity fluctuation of the acoustic channel tends to be consistent with an obvious high-speed particle called cosmic rays. Each probe has experienced the same thing in two different ways, which provides another mystery for astrophysicists to solve.

"Trying to understand why cosmic rays change differently inside and outside the solar sheath is still an open question," Rankin said.

Voyager may be a little old, but we are glad to see that it is busy observing at the edge of the solar system.

Author: Mike McRae

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