Voyager 2 Discovers Wall of Fire at Solar System's Edge

how old wonderful person this is Anton and this right here is one of the Voyager probes I don't know which one maybe one maybe two they look exactly the same now I wanted to start this video by possibly finding something around the house or possibly something my parents may have had that worked for a long time the only thing I have that's the relatively I guess you can call it old is this right here this is actually a Geiger counter that you can use to detect various types of radiation and I've used this in one of the previous videos where I try to calculate how much radiation I was exposed to up there in the skies while flying in an airplane and this thing is actually not even that old it was actually bought in the early 90s possibly 1999 or maybe 1998 so technically it's about twenty years old and it still works pretty well it uses a few double-a batteries and by the way this is totally not a sponsored video it's just the only thing I could find that just still works after 20 years which is why this next segue should totally blow your mind this beautiful piece of hardware has worked for 42 years in space in these super inhospitable conditions filled with radiation extreme cold and always bombarded by all sorts of miniature particles so both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 has been out there for 42 years and they still work what's even more mind-blowing is that these scientists currents were getting all the data and studying all the data a lot of them actually possibly most of them were not even born yet when the probes were launched in around 1977 now this video is obviously not really about how ancient these probes are this video is about the fact that both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes are technically now in these so-called interstellar space because nASA has just recently confirmed that Voyager 2 that was sort of lagging a little bit behind words or one because Voyager 1 is moving faster has now officially reached what we will refer to as interstellar space as indicated by it's still functioning devices that we have and that suggests to us that there is definitely an actual barrier between these so called solar system and the interstellar space and in this video I'm going to discuss some of these findings and to give you a kind of understanding of what's out there in their interstellar space compared to what's here in the solar system but before we start I'm sure a lot of you will probably ask what this long thing is here and why is it even there well this is actually just a beam like structure to separate the magnetic fuel detectors the low field magnetometers as they're known there's one right here and there's another one on the tip and the reason they're in that location is to isolate them from the magnetic interference that might come from the craft itself so that's really the only reason for this long structure also this thing that's sticking out that's the so-called RTG or in more common terms the nuclear reactor that's powering the probe and we think that it's probably going to finally die somewhere around 2025 we're not entirely sure but the probably still has about six to maybe eight years left in it then right here you can see something shining this right here in the middle that's the super famous golden disc also known as the Golden Record it contains this information here which basically presents a few hints about who we are as a species and the location of the solar system right here is designated using the data from very well-known pulsars this is in case anyone wants to actually find us maybe not a good idea but now there's no way for us to ever get this disk back it also has as you can see the sounds of Earth recorded on a disk and in a sense this is probably the most expensive record weather we've ever created and if we were to ever recover it it would probably cost a lot of money but anyway then we obviously have a lot more sensors here and a lot of them still function and this is how we were able to get all of this data about the so-called interstellar space so what exactly have we actually confirmed this time well so first of all we've predicted that there was something known as here pause this is the kind of a boundary between the end of the solar system and the beginning of the interstellar space and as you can see it's sort of formed by the essentially Sun itself more specifically it's formed by the magnetic field of our Sun while at the same time it's formed by the interaction with the interstellar magnetic field which is actually formed by various really highly energy events such as for example supernovae that happen here that do create magnetic field in the interstellar space and what's interesting is that one of the main discoveries here was that both the solar magnetic field and the interstellar magnetic field are actually aligned with each other which is something we didn't really expect to find in other words the magnetic north and south pole for both the solar system and the interstellar space seem to be aligned and interestingly in this graph that was presented in one of the papers that you can find in the description below you can also clearly see that the strength of the magnetic field increased when the craft left the solar system space and entered the so-called interstellar space it actually started increasing right around here it was not a dramatic change and then suddenly jumped when the craft entered V L is M which stands for a very local interstellar medium and the difference in the magnetic field here is pretty dramatic now obviously this doesn't compare to the magnetic field here on planet earth but for actual space itself it is a pretty dramatic difference these numbers also seem to be different from the Voyager 1 probe that entered the interstellar medium a few years ago suggesting that the actual heliosheath that is presented right here in this illustration is not uniform it's more or less broken up in pieces and seems to have different strengths in different locations and what's even more interest me is that for Voyager 1 this event started happening at a distance of about 119 astronomical units away from the Sun or 119 times the distance of Earth to the Sun and for Voyager 2 this only started happening around 121 au so the actual size here was a little bit smaller than the size right here in other words this shape is not as uniform it's more or less broken up into wavy little shapes here and there and one of the explanations proposed so far is that it's very likely that this actual shape relates to these so-called solar cycles that last for 11 years basically every 11 years our Sun goes from being very active to not so active very active not so active it's magnetic field obviously changes as well and this could influence the shape and the size of the actual heliosphere as well and NASA used the analogy of Long's to try to explain this basically imagine it's as if our son was breathing when it's very active it expands and when it's not so active it's sort of shrinks in size which is probably what happens to the heliosphere and this is what we were able to detect here when Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 passed basically because of this solar activity the shape itself changes quite a lot every 11 years and it's probably why we observe these unusual discrepancies between two probes another really interesting discovery here came from the detection of the cosmic rays it seems that as soon as the probes cross the boundary that was created by our Sun the amount of cosmic radiation increased quite a lot in other words it seems that the actual heliosphere protects our solar system from about 70 percent or so of all the galactic cosmic rays that would otherwise strike our planet and our solar system you can see in this graph how as soon as they cross the boundary the galactic cosmic rays increased in numbers but the other Heliospheric particles decreased dramatically and all this was detected about a year ago on November 5th of 2018 now this is something that we definitely were quite surprised to find out and it's a really important discovery if we ever want to become an interstellar species it simply means that there's a lot more galactic cosmic radiation out there outside of our solar system and just to confirm that the heliosphere was not perfectly around as we expected to be the probe as it was passing through this region the tax it is a new rule increases in radiation you can see them right here these two pockets suggesting that there were certain locations inside the heliosphere where the radiation was essentially leaking suggesting that the shape is once again not as uniform as we predicted it to be another way of looking at this as an actual boundary is by looking at the density of plasma plasma is of course any kind of a gas where you strip the gas of its electrons even it's obviously a positive charge now in general plasma is usually associated with things like fire or you know the Sun itself but in this case plasma also exists in certain locations around the solar system and interstellar space so as both probes were leaving the solar system they encountered a sudden density change a very high density of plasma and the increase in temperature of that plasma as a matter of fact it was really a temperature that surprised the scientists the most when the Voyager 2 probe entered the location known as heliopause that's basically the location right before the interstellar space the temperatures here jumped to about 30,000 to 50,000 degrees Kelvin that is really really hot now obviously doesn't mean that the probe is going to burn because the density here is still pretty low because it's space after all but just the fact that it was really hot plasma really surprised the scientists now both the increased temperature and of course increased denser you were actually predicted by our models but we didn't expect the density to jump so much and the temperature to be so hot so this was a bit of a surprise and all of these discoveries from Voyager 2 suggest to us that this is an actual physical barrier it's almost like a wall of hot plasma and various types of radiation cosmic radiation that suddenly jumps up as soon as we cross into the so-called interstellar space and don't forget this is also the location where we've discovered some other objects that for example objects like Eris and Sedna are in these faraway regions and this is also where we expect to find Planet 9 but as you can see from this graph we're not even close to e so-called Oort cloud where all of the comets come from so it will still take a really really long time specifically actually close to about 400 years for us to reach the location by then both of the probes will be unfortunately dead and as a matter of fact the sad news is that this is probably the last time we'll ever hear about the probes there's very little more for us to discover in this particular region of space and the probes are really having trouble communicating with earth even though the antenna here as you can see is pretty big and as a matter of fact it uses a very interesting technique of aligning with the Sun by using the solar detector right there and it's basically always pointing at the Sun because of this nevertheless the the distances here it takes about 16 and a half hours for light to reach the probe and any signal needs to be really really amplified and so because of the distances we're just having trouble communicating with this and receiving the data within the next few years it's very likely that the probes will feel and will probably become the remnants of the early exploration of the solar system maybe one day someone will discover these golden disc and possibly even find planet Earth but it's not going to be anytime soon because it will take thousands and actually millions of years for these probes to reach near stars but that's not the last time we will get to explore the heliosphere and the so-called interstellar space because in 2038 assuming of course it still works the beautiful New Horizons probe that took photos of Pluto and will be also entering interstellar space and reporting back to us telling us what I discovered in there as well but unfortunately for both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 that's probably it it's very possible that we're not going to hear about them ever again until this shutdown and NASA reports that it finally lost the communication with these two grows and it is still kind of shocking that they even function after 42 years but that's basically the power of human engineering and human ingenuity were created something that lasted for a very long time and some of the most inhospitable conditions you can imagine but on this somewhat sad note that's all I wouldn't mention I wanted to kind of explain to you what we've discovered and how both of the probes are now in the interstellar space on that note thank you for watching I hope you enjoyed this video and a bit about self-promotion I recently made this beautiful design available as the first ever I guess you can call it wonderful person merch because you know all of you are wonderful people and I think it's good to remind yourself once in a while how wonderful you are so I actually have this beautiful poster on my door as soon as I enter in my workspace and as you can see I'm also wearing this right now it's now my recording shirt but anyway subscribe if you still haven't share this with someone who loves learning about space and sciences and backs more to learn something you may have not known before and maybe consider supporting this channel patreon because it actually does help me quite a lot I'll see you tomorrow space out and as always bye bye [Music] [Music]

Channel: Anton Petrov

Views: 4,281,372

Rating: 4.8685827 out of 5

Keywords: anton petrov, science, physics, astrophysics, astronomy, universe, whatdamath, what da math, technology, steven universe, space engine, universe sandbox 2, voyager 2, voyager 1, voyager mission, solar system edge, edge of solar system, golden record, voyager golden record, vlism, interstellar space, heliosheath, heliosphere, interstellar medium, galactic rays, cosmic rays, galactic cosmic radiation, wall of plasma, hot plasma, oort cloud, new horizons

Id: S4eg95rG18M

Length: 13min 50sec (830 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 11 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/MrMetalhead69]

A thousand years from now, an alien craft lands on earth, and as humanity waits for first contact, an alien in some sort of space suit comes out and informs earth that they found their junk floating in space and used the map included to bring their shit back, then hands over a bill for retrieval of the satellites and returning them to earth.