NASA confirmed: the second spacecraft went into interstellar space.
Interstellar - traveling in interstellar space - so now you can call the Voyager 2 spacecraft, launched from Earth 42 years ago. He left not only the solar system, but the heliosphere - a kind of bubble formed by particles of solar matter scattering in different directions. The bubble resists cosmic radiation, restraining its flows. Where the outer stream of particles meets the inner stream, the heliosphere boundary passes. It was crossed by Voyager 2, which flew 18 billion kilometers from the Earth - this is almost 120 times farther than from us to the Sun.
Voyager 2 left the heliosphere. That is, it went out into interstellar space.
The fact of crossing the border was recorded by scientific instruments installed on board the vehicle. This was solemnly announced last year at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Now scientists have once again analyzed the data received from detectors of magnetic fields, sensors of energy particles, plasma particles, and confirmed: Voyager 2 really left our world. It happened on November 5, 2018, when, according to Ed Stone, the scientific leader of the mission, professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the density of heliospheric particles dropped sharply, while cosmic radiation, on the contrary, increased.
There are five scientific instruments on board Voyager 2, the data of which have now been analyzed by scientists.
“The boundary between the heliosphere and interstellar space really exists,” Stone assured. - The data sent by Voyager-2 shows that the device has penetrated into a new - yet unknown - region of space.
Detailed scientific reports and data from each of the five instruments on board the spacecraft are published in the journal Nature Astronomy, referenced by NASA for the historic event.
Voyager 2 isn't big, but it's not small either.
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What's in interstellar space? So far - nothing special. There is also plasma beyond the heliosphere, but it is colder and denser than ours. There is more cosmic radiation abroad - about 70 percent. The heliosphere protects us from it very effectively.
REFERENCE
Alien hacker attack
Voyager 2 has been on the road for 42 years. They launched it not only in the hope of "touching" the mysterious interstellar space, but also in the hope of meeting with brothers in mind. It is to them that the information recorded on the gilded records on board is addressed.
And in 2010, it seemed that the aliens received the message, familiarized themselves with it and took control of Voyager 2. The probe began to transmit some encoded messages. NASA specialists themselves reported about the mysterious problems that began on April 22.
- Nobody will tell the truth, but it looks like the probe was captured and reprogrammed - with such an assumption was made then by a certain Hartwig Hausdorff, whom the authoritative German newspaper Bild presented as an "academician". It is not surprising that his statement was liked by the world press and was actively reproduced.
For more than a month, the proposal of the "academician" - to try to decipher the gibberish sent by the probe, and thereby respond to the message of the aliens - seemed quite reasonable. But on May 24, 2010, NASA cleared the suspicion of the brothers in mind, saying that they figured out the cause of the anomaly without them. The malfunction was allegedly caused by cosmic rays, which slightly damaged the on-board computer - specifically one of the memory cells and the data formatting system. It was they, in the opinion of experts, that “encrypted” the transmitted scientific information.
The computer was able to restart. The flow of abracadabra has stopped. The data began to come in normal form.
However, the authoritative "refutation" did not satisfy everyone. First of all, the very "academician" who turned out to be a ufologist - though very famous - the author of numerous books, doubted.
The anomaly was not forgotten. And after almost 10 years, there are enough enthusiasts who believe that alien hackers have interfered with the operation of the probe. And ufologists do not exclude that Voyager 2 is still under extraterrestrial control.
To distant distances and even further
Voyager 2 has a twin brother - Voyager 1, launched in the same 1977, but 16 days later and in the other direction.
Voyager 1 crossed the border in 2012 - that is, 6 years earlier than its brother. Experts explain the big time difference by the fact that the heliosphere has its own shape. Moreover, it can swell and shrink depending on the activity of the Sun.
In any case, Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object from us. It is now about 22 billion kilometers away. Light travels this distance in 19 hours.
Messages to extraterrestrial civilizations are carried on board by both devices. They are the same. It is a copper plated disc. One contains inscriptions, drawings, diagrams and formulas, from which one can understand that their authors are intelligent beings.
There is an indication of where to look for us. What not everyone is happy about.
Another disc is a gramophone record. It contains an address by Jimmy Carter - then the President of the United States (see "Let me turn to you"), short greetings in 55 languages, including Russian, sounds of earthly nature, fragments of musical works. Part of the plate is given to encoded images.
The record is accompanied by a gramophone with a needle and instructions understandable by brothers in mind.
Messages to Aliens: Both Voyagers are launched in the hope of meeting with brothers in mind.
While developing both devices, scientists assumed that they would work for about 5 years - they would photograph Jupiter and Saturn during this time. But we also managed to "hook" Uranus and Neptune. And proceed further in working order.
Voyagers will travel forever. Therefore, the chances that someday someone will find them is by no means zero.
ALLOW TO CONTACT
Jimmy Carter, US President - Aliens:
- This device was created in the United States, in a country with a population of 240 million people living among the 4 billion population of the Earth. Humanity is still divided into separate nations and states, but countries are rapidly moving towards a single earthly civilization.
We are sending this message into space. It will probably survive for a billion years of our future, when our civilization changes and completely changes the face of the Earth … If any civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand the meaning of this disk - here is our message:
This is a gift from a small distant world: our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and feelings. We are trying to survive in our time in order to live in yours. We hope the day will come when the problems we face today will be resolved and we will join the galactic civilization. These records represent our hopes, our determination and our goodwill in this vast and awe inspiring universe.
VLADIMIR LAGOVSKY