The spacecraft Voyager 1 could not leave the Solar system.



It appears, on the border of the Solar system and deep space there is a kind customs. There the magnetic field lines generated by the Sun and is present in the solar wind, undergo a reconnection with lines of force of the magnetic fields of the interstellar medium. This became known thanks to the information, received from Voyager 1, which is still unable to leave the Solar system.

Currently, a veteran space research, launched in 1977, the American machine Voyager 1, close to the very edge of the heliosphere, the area of the solar space, in which the plasma of the solar wind moves relative to the Sun at supersonic speed. As is explained in astrophysics, from outside the heliosphere is limited collisionless shock wave arising in the solar wind due to its interaction with the interstellar plasma and interstellar magnetic field. But, according to the latest data, the ship that approached the external border of the Solar system some years ago, now "stumbled on before unknown in this field structure, informs"the Echo of Moscow". Scientists call it magnetic highway that separates the heliosphere from interstellar space.

According to one of participants of the project Voyager ed stone of the California Institute of technology, "opened a new area of the heliosphere, which we did not suspect". "We (i.e. the spacecraft) is still here, most likely. But the magnetic field, heliosphere, connected with external (relative to the Solar system) environment that resembles the highway there and back rush particles of the solar wind", explains the scientist.

Voyager 1 has entered a new region in August this year, when suddenly began to register in their environment fall in the number of low-speed particles of the solar wind and together with the sharp rise in the number of high-energy cosmic rays.

"It seemed as if someone opened the sluices and the water gushed", says Tom Krimigis of the applied physics laboratory of Johns Hopkins University. Continuing the analogy, he observes that some "rowers" move with the flow with the speed close to the speed of light.

Despite the sudden influx of cosmic rays, the device is still within the Solar system, evidenced by the data of its magnetometer, which changes the direction of the magnetic field, expected at the border with mezhzvezdnoi environment are not yet registered.

Currently, Voyager 1 is 18.3 billion kilometers from the Sun, farther than any man-made object in the Universe. The radio signal is sent to the device with the Land, and returned back, is 34 hours. How long will it take Voyager 1 at overcoming the heliopause, the outer boundary of the solar wind, and out into the interstellar medium, nobody knows.