Voyager 1 - VIM - Beyond the Mission

Channel Hopper

Channel Hopper

Suffering fools, so you don't have to.
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Voyager 1, launched some 35 years ago, is now on the edge of the Solar System, where the solar winds are balanced by interstellar particles from elsewhere.


_http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/interstellar.html


I'm a bit confused by this passage though

The first feature encountered by a spacecraft as a result of this interstellar wind/solar wind interaction was be the termination shock where the solar wind slows from supersonic to subsonic speed

Space, being a virtual vacuum (where nobody can hear you scream) sound therefore doesn't really exist. What therefore is the correct measured velocity at which sound travels in interstellar space ?


Nothing here

_http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/623511main_IBEX_lithograph.pdf
 
Channel Hopper said:
What therefore is the correct measured velocity at which sound travels in interstellar space ?
Click to expand...

For a kick off, how do they know it slows from super to subsonic? Isn't it a theoretical hypothesis? Velocity of sound (I think) is normally measured at sea level and varies with earth bound conditions which couldn't apply in space.
 
Slightly (only very) off-topic:

In the early stages of the expansion of the universe when it was much, much smaller than it is now there WAS enough interstellar gas for sound to propagate between stars (more likely protostars) and this sound carried energy around.

It was supposed (how DO they know?) that it sounded like a great bell resonating. Must've been a bloody loud bell is all I can say.
 
[video=youtube;EFnJzyxd78o]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFnJzyxd78o&feature=player_embedded#![/video]
 
Gotta love the Star Trek references, "The final frontier" and "Where no Spacecraft has gone before", but then NASA is full of trekkies, except they actually get to explore space, just not while in space... O-Ha

In a few centuries, they have an even tougher challenge, Klingons... :-ohcrap

[video=youtube;LOqoljJ0ees]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOqoljJ0ees[/video]
 
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