There are a lot of things out there in the universe that need our attention, but a wall of fire found by the Voyager probes? Yeah, that's something else. Join us as we explore exactly what's going on here. 7. What Are The Voyager Probes?
Considering that we're talking about how the Voyager Space Probes were the ones that discovered this "wall of fire" in deep space, it would probably be nice to know what they are, right?
Voyager 1 is a probe that humanity sent out to observe the universe at large, and it's currently well past Pluto and has shown us many things about our solar system. In 2017, it was set at around 138 AU's from our planet. AU means "Astronomical Unit", which in this case means the distance from the Earth to the Sun. So 138 AU's means that it's 138 times far than the Earth is from the sun right now. That's a really big number. Over 12 billion miles to be exact. That's the farthest anything from man has traveled in space.
One of its crowning achievements was a photograph showing a set of sunbeams, and in one of those sunbeams was earth. It was a dot. A dot in a grander scale photograph of our solar system. That's how small we are in the scale of our system when you look from the outside in, we are a dot. An epic dot, but a dot no doubt.
But what might shock you even more is that despite the distance that Voyager 1 has traveled, it'll never reach the end of our solar system. Our solar system is confined within what is known as the Oort Cloud. And to reach the edge of that cloud would take another 30,000 years for the Voyager 1. Which should show just how big our solar system is, and how condensed the space the planets that are in it is.
6. The Wall Of Fire
While it's true that the Voyager Probes haven't left the solar system as of yet, that doesn't mean they haven't gone far. They are in a place now that is defined as "Interstellar Space", though that classification can mean many different things. In the context of this video though they're past the Heliosphere. That is where solar winds emitted from our sun still blow things outwards. So in many ways, the probes are away from the reach of the sun.
But, what Voyager 2 (backed up by data from Voyager 1) has found is that once they're outside that reach, the plasma that is out in space doesn't go down, it actually goes up in density by a large margin!
"The Voyager probes are showing us how our Sun interacts with the stuff that fills most of the space between stars in the Milky Way galaxy," said Ed Stone, project scientist for Voyager and a professor of physics at Caltech. "Without this new data from Voyager 2, we wouldn't know if what we were seeing with Voyager 1 was characteristic of the entire heliosphere or specific just to the location and time when it crossed."
5. The Problem With Plasma
Plasma, if you didn't know, is the fourth state of matter, and it was always known, or at least believed, that there was some outside the Heliosphere, as between the suns' emissions and the rest of the universe pouring things into deep space, it was basically pretty natural for it to be there. And when Voyager 1 first reached the point of Interstellar Space, it noticed some slightly higher levels of plasma, but it was Voyager 2 that showed that it was MUCH bigger than anticipated.
Plasma is very hot, and while the "Wall of Fire" is said to be somewhat colder than the sun's plasma it's dispersing regularly, it's still hot enough to mess with people and objects, which we'll be talking about later. But more importantly than that is that it's thick. This is well and truly a wall of fiery plasma.
4. Leaks?
As noted, there are many problems with this wall of fire, and one of them may just be how exactly this thing is forming. After all, scientists were a bit stunned by the density that the Wall of Fire exudes in Interstellar Space. But what might be even more surprising though is that Voyager 2 indicates that part of the reason the field of fire is so thick is that the Heliosphere has a leak in it.
3. Magnetic Fields and Magnetic Shields
The discovery of the Wall of Fire wasn't the only thing that people at NASA were interested in when it was discovered. Instead, it was also the fact that there was new information given about the magnetic fields that were there in the outer reaches of interstellar space. You see, our solar system is held within a magnetic field that is comprised mostly of the suns' field. Not unlike the orbits of the planets and such. Thus, when you get out of the reach of the sun via the Heliosphere, it goes to reason that the magnetic field would go off in a different direction entirely. In fact, that is what everyone at NASA thought before Voyager 1 & 2 proved them very, very wrong.
2. The Question Of Space Travel
Ok, so now let's talk about one of the biggest problems with this Wall of Fire. Mainly...how are we going to get past it?
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