It is interesting to read about it - beautiful pictures are obtained in the head. We will never see this, we will never find out if this is actually the case. But assumptions, theories, fantasies are beautiful. Why is it to man and mankind is incomprehensible. There is no practical benefit from this and will not be for hundreds of years. It doesn't even help us get closer to the Moon, let alone Mars. But it's still beautiful …
The New Horizons space explorer, now far beyond Pluto's orbit at 6.44 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) from Earth, has taken another measurement and discovered an energy signature belonging to the hydrogen wall surrounding the solar system.
These measurements practically correspond to measurements made about 30 years ago by the spacecraft of the Voyager mission. And the data collected during these measurements allowed scientists to clarify the limits to which the influence of our sun extends.
“We assume that there is something at the edges of the solar system that is still unknown to modern science,” says Randy Gladstone, a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute. New Horizons will allow us to get an image of it."
Our Sun emits a huge amount of charged particles into the surrounding space, most of which are hydrogen ions. These particles, penetrating the space of the solar system, emit characteristic ultraviolet light. With the loss of some of the energy, the particles slow down, and as a result of this, a certain boundary arises, where they stop and accumulate in a sufficiently large amount, creating a hydrogen cloud of a spherical or close to it shape, which surrounds our entire system.
Scientists have taken pictures in the ultraviolet range using the Alice instrument of the New Horizons spacecraft. When this instrument was focused at a specific distance from the Sun, a burst of ultraviolet light was detected. The most likely reason for the presence of this burst is the accumulation of hydrogen atoms at the borders of the solar system, which interact with particles of the solar wind reaching there, creating a kind of hydrogen "wall".
As mentioned above, the Voyager spacecraft measured the energy signature of the hydrogen wall about 30 years ago. Re-analysis of the data, carried out taking into account the data of the New Horizons apparatus, showed that in the past, scientists were quite wrong in determining the strength of the brightness of the "wall" glow.
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However, scientists admit that the source of the measured signal may have a completely different nature. “It is possible that the signal we measured was emitted by something else,” says Randy Gladstone, “However, the new data very well confirmed the data obtained 30 years ago. We will continue to observe these signals until we make sure that their source is either a hydrogen 'wall' or something else."
The New Horizons spacecraft is currently preparing to meet its target, the rocky asteroid MU69, about 30 kilometers in size, which belongs to the Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69 class. After flying past the asteroid, the New Horizons apparatus will continue to move towards the borders of the solar system, and by 2030 it will be at the same distance from the Sun, on which the Voyager mission apparatus is now located.