Team member James Cordes of Cornell University described the hum not as an annoying drone, but as something much more pleasant: It’s when the eruptions are quiet that there’s a background hum. Voyager 1 has an instrument called a Plasma Wave System, which has been detecting larger eruptions from the sun that affect the plasma, or ionized gas, in interstellar space. As Voyager 1 reads its environment, it allows scientists to understand how the interstellar medium and solar wind interact and how the the bubble of the solar system’s heliosphere is shaped by external forces. This stream from our sun is no longer the dominant force affecting Voyager 1, however similar “winds” from other stars mix in. Image via Cornell University.Īlthough Voyager 1 is traveling in interstellar space, it still feels some influence from the solar wind, a stream of charged particles from our sun. Astronomer Stella Koch Ocker led the study leading to the discovery of a low-level hum in interstellar space. The study was published May 10, 2021, in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Astronomy. We’re detecting the faint, persistent hum of interstellar gas. It’s very faint and monotone, because it is in a narrow-frequency bandwidth.
Astronomer Stella Koch Ocker of Cornell University led the study and, in a statement, described Voyager 1’s discovery: Interstellar space isn’t quite as empty as a vacuum, and a team of scientists announced on May 10, 2021, that Voyager 1 has now sent back a message, saying it’s detected a faint, monotonous hum of interstellar gas ( plasma). It’s now traveling in the vastness of interstellar space – the space between the stars – and is, at present, the most distant human-made object from us. Voyager 1 left Earth in 1977 and crossed the boundary of our sun’s magnetic influence (the heliopause) in 2012. Voyager 1 is said to have sailed out of our solar system in 2012, when it crossed the heliopause into interstellar space.
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