Solar System Passing Through Interstellar Cloud

[MORRIS LEVIN]

Solar System Passing Through Interstellar Cloud
Posted on: Wednesday, 23 December 2009, 13:41 CST
The solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud that physics says should not exist. In the Dec. 24th issue of Nature, a team of scientists reveal how NASA's Voyager spacecraft have solved the mystery.
"Using data from Voyager, we have discovered a strong magnetic field just outside the solar system," explains lead author Merav Opher, a NASA Heliophysics Guest Investigator from George Mason University. "This magnetic field holds the interstellar cloud together and solves the long-standing puzzle of how it can exist at all."
The discovery has implications for the future when the solar system will eventually bump into other, similar clouds in our arm of the Milky Way galaxy.
Astronomers call the cloud we're running into now the Local Interstellar Cloud or "Local Fluff" for short. It's about 30 light years wide and contains a wispy mixture of hydrogen and helium atoms at a temperature of 6000 C. The existential mystery of the Fluff has to do with its surroundings. About 10 million years ago, a cluster of supernovas exploded nearby, creating a giant bubble of million-degree gas. The Fluff is completely surrounded by this high-pressure supernova exhaust and should be crushed or dispersed by it.
"The observed temperature and density of the local cloud do not provide enough pressure to resist the 'crushing action' of the hot gas around it," says Opher.
So how does the Fluff survive? The Voyagers have found an answer.
"Voyager data show that the Fluff is much more strongly magnetized than anyone had previously suspected—between 4 and 5 microgauss*," says Opher. "This magnetic field can provide the extra pressure required to resist destruction."
NASA's two Voyager probes have been racing out of the solar system for more than 30 years. They are now beyond the orbit of Pluto and on the verge of entering interstellar space—but they are not there yet.
"The Voyagers are not actually inside the Local Fluff," says Opher. "But they are getting close and can sense what the cloud is like as they approach it."
The Fluff is held at bay just beyond the edge of the solar system by the sun's magnetic field, which is inflated by solar wind into a magnetic bubble more than 10 billion km wide. Called the "heliosphere," this bubble acts as a shield that helps protect the inner solar system from galactic cosmic rays and interstellar clouds. The two Voyagers are located in the outermost layer of the heliosphere, or "heliosheath," where the solar wind is slowed by the pressure of interstellar gas.
Voyager 1 entered the heliosheath in Dec. 2004; Voyager 2 followed almost 3 years later in Aug. 2007. These crossings were key to Opher et al's discovery.
The size of the heliosphere is determined by a balance of forces: Solar wind inflates the bubble from the inside while the Local Fluff compresses it from the outside. Voyager's crossings into the heliosheath revealed the approximate size of the heliosphere and, thus, how much pressure the Local Fluff exerts. A portion of that pressure is magnetic and corresponds to the ~5 microgauss Opher's team has reported in Nature.
The fact that the Fluff is strongly magnetized means that other clouds in the galactic neighborhood could be, too. Eventually, the solar system will run into some of them, and their strong magnetic fields could compress the heliosphere even more than it is compressed now. Additional compression could allow more cosmic rays to reach the inner solar system, possibly affecting terrestrial climate and the ability of astronauts to travel safely through space. On the other hand, astronauts wouldn't have to travel so far because interstellar space would be closer than ever. These events would play out on time scales of tens to hundreds of thousands of years, which is how long it takes for the solar system to move from one cloud to the next.
"There could be interesting times ahead!" says Opher.
To read the original research, look in the Dec. 24, 2009, issue of Nature for Opher et al's article, "A strong, highly-tilted interstellar magnetic field near the Solar System."














Author: Dr. Tony Phillips, Science @ NASA

[MORRIS LEVIN]

Article has been published in full.

[MegaMontana]

I also want to add that NASA is an abomination to science. They only blunt mankinds progression.

[The Shadow]

Sounds to me like NASA is laying the groundwork for another PX debris cover story. (I assume that is your point, Morris, but if so, you should say so--simply posting items without relating them to the topic of this ning is confusing.)

[MegaMontana]

I go around spreading the news that people should watch the live magnetosphere simulation if they want more proof that the shit is going down. As usual, no takers. What a shame, but this is the way of things.

[Nancy Lieder]

But the Earth present magnetic anolmalies are NOT from such distant sources, which have been present for how long now? They are due to the OBJECT which SOHO is presenting, cannot airbrush out, for so many months. You know, the one predicted to arrive in 2003, and did. The one coming outbound from the Sun now, creating such predictable havoc with our magnetosphere, the wobble weather. JUST as the Zetas predicted from the start, in their 270 deg roll explanations.

http://www.zetatalk.com/index/zeta163.htm
http://www.zetatalk.com/index/zeta253.htm

Once again I ask, what is your POINT.

[Nancy Lieder]

Articles appearing last October, 2009 shows that NASA was coming late to this understanding, that our solar system is subject to magnetic influences outside of the Sun. Zeta RIGHT Again!
On October 15, 2009 NASA admitted that the prevailing concept of how the solar system was shaped was wrong. They had assumed it was delimited by the solar wind, creating a comet like shape - a nose cone in front and a tail in the back. Their own probe demonstrated that the solar system was in the shape of a bubble, delimited by magnetic particle flow.

Cassini Data Help Redraw Shape of Solar System
October 15, 2009
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=2337
Images from the Ion and Neutral Camera on NASA's Cassini spacecraft suggest that the heliosphere, the region of the sun's influence, may not have the comet-like shape predicted by existing models. In a paper published Oct. 15 in Science Express, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory present a new view of the heliosphere, and the forces that shape it. As the solar wind flows from the sun, it carves out a bubble in the interstellar medium. Models of the boundary region between the heliosphere and interstellar medium have been based on the assumption that the relative flow of the interstellar medium and its collision with the solar wind dominate the interaction. This would create a foreshortened "nose" in the direction of the solar system's motion, and an elongated "tail" in the opposite direction. The Ion and Neutral Camera images suggest that the solar wind's interaction with the interstellar medium is instead more significantly controlled by particle pressure and magnetic field energy density.

NASA's IBEX Spots Mystery Emissions at Edge of Solar System
October 15, 2009
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,567020,00.html
"[The ribbon is] aligned by and dominated by the external magnetic field," McComas said in a briefing Thursday. "That's a huge clue as to what's going on. But still we're missing some really fundamental aspect of the interaction - some fundamental physics is missing from our understanding." The new IBEX results will be published in the Oct. 16 issue of the journal Science.

[Nancy Lieder]

I found this a fascinating ACKNOWLEDGEMENT that the Zetas were on top of it, long before NASA et al. In fact, added this whole subject to the ZetaTalk Accuracy section.
http://www.zetatalk.com/theword/tworx606.htm

The Zetas have always asserted that the Sun dominated the solar system's magnetic field, and did not flip its poles every 11 years as NASA has asserted. The Zetas stated that the Sun's influence reached to the end of the solar system, and that a magnetic influence affecting the solar system came from beyond the solar system, triggering what the Zetas called the Magnetic Trimesters.

Magnetic influences between planets are greater than humans imagine, because they use as their frame of reference objects on the surface. The Earth's crust is magnetically diffuse, representing many different pole alliances over the eons, as magma hardened after volcanic eruptions during pole shifts. The Earth's thick crust acts as a shield in this way, so that only sensitive needles on compasses, floating freely, jiggle into alignment with the Earth's core. A planet's magnetic influence is not encapsulated by its crust, but reaches beyond this even to the ends of the solar system.
ZetaTalk: Planetary Magnetism, written February 15, 1996

When this path of least resistance is established in a gaseous planet, the magnetic particle flow takes a short cut to the south pole of the Sun, the dominant magnetic influence in the area. Those particles flowing through such a gaseous magnet do not return to the south pole of the planet they have just passed through, but move along to the south pole of the Sun. Magnetic fields are measured by man not by the flow of particles, but by the direction of the flow, as the orientation is determined by which way a magnet swings under the influence of this flow. Thus, probes sent to measure the magnetic field of a gaseous planet find their test magnets swinging into alignment, both the south pole of the gaseous planet and the test magnet lined up to act as a conduit for the intense flow of magnetic particles on the move. The fact that there is no actual field about the gaseous planet, no return from the north pole of the gaseous magnet to its south pole, is not noted.
ZetaTalk: Opposition, written 2001

Why is it the Sun, as the giant magnet dominating the solar system, points North and South with its poles in the directions it does? For those late to this argument, the Sun does not reverse polarity every 11 years as NASA states, and the solar magnetic field reaches beyond the outer bounds of the solar system, affecting all the planets. The Sun likewise is under the dictates of influences that surround it, and as the Sun goes, so go the planets.
ZetaTalk: Magnetic Trimesters, written 2001