Clipmarks | Heliosphere Clips

The Electric Universe

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:20:12 GMT

clipped by: robm47
clipper's remarks: NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer adds more evidence that our Sun, like all stars and the universe itself is electric in nature.

Clip Source: www.holoscience.com

NASA's IBEX (Interstellar Boundary Explorer) spacecraft has made the first all-sky maps of the boundary between the Sun’s environment (the heliosphere), and interstellar space.

The EU model is based on a hierarchy of repeated patterns of plasma behavior, from the size of a galaxy down to a few centimeters in the laboratory. Therefore it is subject to experimental confirmation, unlike most astrophysical theory today.

IBEX's recent results that have taken researchers by surprise have given yet more strength to the EU model, a model that confidently predicts that the shape of the Sun’s galactic plasma environment is the hourglass, Z-pinch shape of planetary nebulae and supernovae, aligned with the local interstellar magnetic field. The beautiful symmetrical patterns that arise in plasma discharges from very simple principles renders all modeling that ignores the electrical nature of matter and the universe worthless.

Mystery Space "Ribbon" Found at Solar System's Edge

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:16:48 GMT

clipped by: skwirlinator

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

Mystery Space "Ribbon" Found at Solar System's Edge

In a discovery that took astronomers by surprise, the first full-sky map of the solar system's edge—more than 9 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) away—has revealed a bright "ribbon" of atoms called ENAs.

The ribbon isn't visible to people and wouldn't harm spacecraft or humans passing through it, IBEX principal investigator David McComas, of the Southwest Research Institute in Texas, told National Geographic News.

One idea is that, wherever the Milky Way's magnetic field presses on the heliosphere, more ENAs are created.

"That could be an unbelievably remarkable coincidence, or it could be a fabulous clue that somehow this external magnetic field is actually imprinting onto our heliosphere through some process that we don't yet understand."

"We've observed about a million ENAs over the six months that it took to make the sky map," McComas said.

Tags: mystery, space "ribbon", found, solar system's edge

Glimpses of Solar System's edge

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 06:52:09 GMT

clipped by: spherepet

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Glimpses of Solar System's edge

Thursday, 15 October 2009 19:13 UK

Ibex was launched nearly one year ago to map the heliosphere, the region of space defined by the extent of our Sun's solar wind.

The true extent and shape of the heliosphere has been a subject of debate for more than half a century. Until now, the best clues came from the two Voyager spacecraft, which are believed to have passed through the heliopause at two different distances.

What a number of researchers have found is that the flow of the ENAs is uneven, with a significantly higher flow in a "ribbon" across the sky.

However, Ibex is showing us a very narrow ribbon that is two to three times brighter than anything else in the sky."

These concentrations of incoming particles were just missed by the Voyager spacecraft, Dr McComas explained.

But the exact shape, and the forces that cause it, are still a matter of debate between the teams.

Tags: heliosphere, ibex, enas

Heliospheric current sheet

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 05:04:12 GMT

clipped by: amgumen

Clip Source: www.sott.net

The heliospheric current sheet (HCS) is the surface within the Solar System where the polarity of the Sun's magnetic field changes from north to south. This field extends throughout the Sun's equatorial plane in the heliosphere.The shape of the current sheet results from the influence of the Sun's rotating magnetic field on the plasma in the interplanetary medium (Solar Wind). A small electrical current flows within the sheet, about 10−10 A/m². The thickness of the current sheet is about 10,000 km.

The heliospheric current sheet, for the last three minima, has got down to 3°. The last reading was 8.7°. It has been declining at an average of 8.6° per annum. If it holds that rate, solar minimum will be in August 2009.

If it holds to the orange bounding line, solar minimum could be as late as April 2010.

The last reading on the classic series is 22.8° and this series got down to 10° on average in previous solar minima. At its decline rate, solar minimum will be in another 1.9 years

Sun's protective bubble is shrinking, NASA warns

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:36:50 GMT

clipped by: cakebelly

Clip Source: digg.com

Sun's protective 'bubble' is shrinking, NASA warns

telegraph.co.uk — The protective bubble around the sun that helps to shield the Earth from harmful interstellar radiation is shrinking and getting weaker, Nasa scientists have warned. New data has revealed that the heliosphere, the protective shield of energy that surrounds our solar system, has weakened by 25 per cent over the past decade.

Will Intergalactic Cosmic Radiation Get Us All?

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 12:53:52 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: Al Gore won't solve this one.

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

New data has revealed that the heliosphere, the protective shield of energy that surrounds our solar system, has weakened by 25 per cent over the past decade and is now at it lowest level since the space race began 50 years ago.

Scientists are baffled at what could be causing the barrier to shrink in this way and are to launch mission to study the heliosphere.

The Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, will be launched from an aircraft on Sunday on a Pegasus rocket into an orbit 150,000 miles above the Earth where it will "listen" for the shock wave that forms as our solar system meets the interstellar radiation.

Without the heliosphere the harmful intergalactic cosmic radiation would make life on Earth almost impossible by destroying DNA and making the climate uninhabitable.

If the heliosphere continues to weaken, scientists fear that the amount of cosmic radiation reaching the inner parts of our solar system, including Earth, will increase.

Solar Wind Loses Power, Hits 50-year Low

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:47:55 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Can recommend the whole article.

Clip Source: science.nasa.gov

Sept. 23, 2008: In a briefing today at NASA headquarters, solar physicists announced that the solar wind is losing power.

"The average pressure of the solar wind has dropped more than 20% since the mid-1990s," says Dave McComas of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "This is the weakest it's been since we began monitoring solar wind almost 50 years ago."

McComas is principal investigator for the SWOOPS solar wind sensor onboard the Ulysses spacecraft, which measured the decrease. Ulysses, launched in 1990, circles the sun in a unique orbit that carries it over both the sun's poles and equator, giving Ulysses a global view of solar wind activity:

Above: Global measurements of solar wind pressure by Ulysses. Green curves trace the solar wind in 1992-1998, while blue curves denote lower pressure winds in 2004-2008. [Larger image]

The heliosphere. Click to view a larger image showing the rest of the bubble.

The solar wind isn't inflating the heliosphere as much

Tags: astronomy

Ulysses finds Sun becoming less blustery

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 07:28:17 GMT

clipped by: pokkets

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Steve Gorman

New data from a solar-orbiting probe has found the sun's winds are less blustery than they used to be, and may provide new insights into earth's nearest star.

Measurements by the Ulysses spacecraft may have future astronauts who venture beyond earth orbit a little worried

Data from the Ulysses spacecraft show the solar wind, a steady stream of charged sub-atomic particles emitted by the sun and blowing at 1.6 million kilometres per hour, has dwindled to its lowest level in at least 50 years, reducing its strength as a shield against potentially harmful galactic cosmic radiation.

The solar wind inflates a massive protective bubble, called the heliosphere, around the solar system.

Measurements show the wind's pressure has dropped 20% since the mid-1990s. At the same time, the electron temperature of the solar wind has declined 13%.

As the solar wind weakens, the heliosphere is expected to dwindle in size and strength, allowing more cosmic radiation

to reach the inner solar system.

Ulysses Reveals Global Solar Wind Plasma Output At 50-Year Low

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:17:32 GMT

clipped by: infopunk

Clip Source: science.nasa.gov

Clip Source: www.nasa.gov

Data from the Ulysses spacecraft

show the sun has reduced its output of solar wind to the lowest levels since accurate readings became available.

Clip Source: www.gedds.alaska.edu

Clip Source: www.nasa.gov

"The sun's million mile-per-hour solar wind inflates a protective bubble, or heliosphere, around the solar system.

It influences how things work here on Earth and even out at the boundary of our solar system where it meets the galaxy

Clip Source: www.fas.org

Clip Source: www.nasa.gov

The solar wind interacts with every planet in our solar system. It also defines the border between our solar system and interstellar space.

Clip Source: helios.gsfc.nasa.gov

Clip Source: www.nasa.gov

This border, called the heliopause, surrounds our solar system where the solar wind's strength is no longer great enough to push back the wind of other stars. The region around the heliopause also acts as a shield for our solar system, warding off a significant portion of the cosmic rays outside the galaxy.

Clip Source: www.marketwatch.com

Cosmic rays are linked to engineering decisions for unmanned interplanetary spacecraft and exposure limits for astronauts traveling beyond low-Earth orbit.

Clip Source: www.spaceweather.com

Sun's magnetic field

Voyager 2 reports from the edge of the solar system

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 16:06:14 GMT

clipped by: dewitte

Clip Source: physicsworld.com

Over 30 years after it was launched, NASA’s Voyager 2 space probe has reached the “edge” of the solar system.

In doing so the probe has confirmed that the heliosphere — an immense bubble-like structure surrounding the Sun and formed by the solar wind — is not a perfect sphere but is a squashed ellipsoid.

Voyager 2 crossed the “heliospheric termination shock” in August 2007 at a distance of about 12bn kilometers from the Sun. This is about twice as far from the Sun as Pluto and about 1.5bn kilometers closer to the Sun than where its partner Voyager 1 crossed this threshold in 2004. This confirms telescope-based observations of the flow of hydrogen and helium in this region made in 2005, which suggested that the heliosphere is squashed by interstellar magnetic fields.

Tags: voyager, space, astronomy

Solar System Dented, Not Round

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:07:16 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: The "bottom" of the egg is flattened by a permanent clash of particles, as the outbound solar wind smashes into atomic debris hurtling in from interstellar space, the scientists theorize.
Voyager 2 also crossed the "termination shock" several times within the space of a single day, showing that the boundary is in perpetual flux, like the ebb-and-flow of a tide.

Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

July 2, 2008 -- Millions of textbooks depicting our solar system as spherical have got it all wrong, according to studies of data sent back from deep space by NASA's venerable probe, Voyager 2.

The sun's zone of influence -- called the heliosphere -- turns out to be seriously asymmetrical, not round, they say.

Launched in 1977 on a historic trek of the outer planets, Voyager 2 has now crossed the turbulent boundary, known as the "termination shock," where the heliosphere yields to interstellar space.

Its twin probe Voyager 1, crossed the same threshold four years earlier at a different spot some one billion miles farther from the sun.

This difference proves that the heliosphere is not even close to perfectly round, but is oblong, like an egg, according to the studies, released by the British journal Nature on Wednesday.

Tags: astronomy, is, for, stars

Solar system a bit squashed, not nicely round

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:50:46 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks:

"Imagine a balloon is being blown up by the solar wind. You might imagine that if you took a balloon, which is mainly spherical, and pushed it against the wall, it would be blunted on one side," said Edward Stone of the California Institute of Technology, one of the scientists involved in the research.

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

The solar system may not be a nice round shape, but rather a bit squashed and oblong, according to data from the Voyager 2 spacecraft exploring the solar system's outer limits, scientists said on Wednesday.

Launched in 1977, the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 unmanned probes are now studying the edges of the heliosphere, the huge magnetic "bubble" around our solar system created by the solar wind as it runs up against the thin gas in interstellar space.

Voyager 2 in August 2007 crossed this boundary 7.8 billion miles from the sun.

Voyager 1 had crossed the boundary in December 2004 about 10 billion miles away from Voyager 1 and almost a billion miles farther from the sun.

Scientists think this indicates that the bubble carved into interstellar space by the heliosphere, which extends well past the distant orbit of Pluto, is not perfectly round, and the solar system is shaped a bit like an oblong.

Tags: space, solar system, heliosphere, voyager, science

Space Probe Ulysses Reaches End of Odyssey

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:28:06 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Well earned retirement. Off on a voyage, I suppose.

Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

On Its Last Leg

June 13, 2008 -- European and American scientists will bid a fond farewell on July 1 to the space probe Ulysses, which has circled the sun gathering data for 17 years, almost four times its expected lifetime.

The first major collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 1990, "changed forever the way we view the sun and its effect on the surrounding space," David Southwood, ESA's director of science, said in announcing the end of mission.

Stuffed with 10 observational instruments, the 814-pound probe is the only satellite to have circled the sun's poles.

Its principle objective was to explore the boundaries and impact of the sun's sphere of influence, called the heliosphere.

One of its many findings was that the sun's magnetic fields, thrust outward by solar wind, extends into the solar system in ways that were previously not suspected.

Tags: astronomy

Voyager 2 finds our solar system is squashed

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 09:38:09 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: We believe it's a magnetic field distorting an otherwise spherical surface."

Clip Source: www.news.com

Thirty years after launch but earlier than expected, Voyager 2 has left the cozy realm of our solar system, where the stream of particles from the sun dominates space.

You might think that space billions of miles from the sun is a placid, empty domain. In fact, Voyager 2 has been heading outward in the same direction as the solar wind, charged particles streaming from the sun, but things started to get a lot more complicated on August 30, when the spacecraft was 7.8 billion miles from the sun

There, the spacecraft passed into a new region, where the solar wind suddenly slams into the prevailing breeze and magnetic field left from a series of massive supernovas from 20 million to 30 million years ago

In this area, called the termination shock, the speed of the solar wind drops abruptly from about 250 miles per second to about 60

"There's something outside pushing in on the field of the heliosphere

Tags: astronomy, solar system, magnetic push distortion

Voyager: 30 years in space

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 18:14:47 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: www.planetary.org

NASA's two venerable Voyager spacecraft are celebrating three decades of flight as they head toward interstellar space. Their ongoing odysseys mark an unprecedented and historic accomplishment.

Voyager 2 launched on August 20, 1977, and Voyager 1 launched on September 5, 1977. They continue to return information from distances more than three times farther away than Pluto.

"The Voyager mission is a legend in the annals of space exploration. It opened our eyes to the scientific richness of the outer solar system, and it has pioneered the deepest exploration of the Sun's domain ever conducted,"

For the past 18 years, the twin Voyagers have been probing the Sun's outer heliosphere and its boundary with interstellar space. Both Voyagers remain healthy and are returning scientific data 30 years after their launches.

commands from Earth, traveling at light speed, take 14 hours one-way to reach Voyager 1 and 12 hours to reach Voyager 2. Each Voyager logs approximately 1 million miles per day

Tags: space, exploration, voyager, solar system, nasa