Scientists have discovered something spooky and strange occurring at the edge of the solar system: The heliopause — the boundary between the heliosphere (the bubble of solar wind encompassing the solar system) and the interstellar medium (the material between the stars) appears to be rippling and creating oblique angles in an unexpected manner.
Recent years have confirmed what scientists have known for a while: the heliopause is not a static feature of the solar system and its form evolves with time. NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) satellite, which investigates the emissions of energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) created when solar winds and the interstellar medium interact, and the data from Voyager 1 and Voyager 2—the only two spacecraft to leave the heliosphere to date—were used to make this discovery.
The Voyager spacecraft has made the only direct, on-site measurements of these limits. However, this is the case only at a certain time and place.
To better understand the heliopause's dynamic behaviour, scientists have utilised this data to develop predictive models. Simply put, this border is always shifting due to the interaction between the solar winds and the interstellar medium.
However, new heliopause research has shown discrepant evidence to the established theory. IBEX recorded brighter ENAs over the course of many months in 2014, indicating asymmetries in the heliopause, which were subsequently found to be at odds with the models.
In addition, scientists found that the heliopause shifted substantially in a short amount of time after evaluating data from the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 voyages. That explains why the two probes didn't enter interstellar space until 2012 and 2018, with a six-year interval in between. But such heliopause motion is likewise inconsistent with the models.
These differences are described as "intriguing and potentially controversial" in a report published on October 10 in Nature Astronomy. The team intends to keep researching the heliopause until 2025, when NASA plans to deploy its Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, an upgraded satellite capable of detecting ENAs.
Until then, all we can do is speculate on what exactly is going on in the darkest reaches of the solar system.
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