Voyager 1 has left the solar system, sudden changes in cosmic rays indicate
20 March 2013
AGU Release No. 13-11
For Immediate Release
WASHINGTON – Thirty-five years after its launch, Voyager 1 appears to have travelled beyond the influence of the Sun and exited the heliosphere, according to a new study appearing online today.
The heliosphere is a region of space dominated by the Sun and its wind of energetic particles, and which is thought to be enclosed, bubble-like, in the surrounding interstellar medium of gas and dust that pervades the Milky Way galaxy.
On August 25, 2012, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft measured drastic changes in radiation levels, more than 11 billion miles from the Sun. Anomalous cosmic rays, which are cosmic rays trapped in the outer heliosphere, all but vanished, dropping to less than 1 percent of previous amounts. At the same time, galactic cosmic rays – cosmic radiation from outside of the solar system – spiked to levels not seen since Voyager's launch, with intensities as much as twice previous levels.
The findings have been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
"Within just a few days, the heliospheric intensity of trapped radiation decreased, and the cosmic ray intensity went up as you would expect if it exited the heliosphere," said Bill Webber, professor emeritus of astronomy at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. He calls this transition boundary the "heliocliff."
In the GRL article, the authors state: "It appears that [Voyager 1] has exited the main solar modulation region, revealing [hydrogen] and [helium] spectra characteristic of those to be expected in the local interstellar medium."
http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2013/2013-11.shtml
= new reply since forum marked as read
I suppose there is the possibility that we had some help from "Roswell Aliens", but I think we did most of the work. At worst, it was "Assembled on Earth"™ 
I had never thought of Veeger (Star Trek episode) being interstellar. But that is quite accurate and fun to think of it that way.
obviously, it wasn't 
11,000,000,000 / 186,282 /60 /60
I skipped minutes and went straight to hours for some unknown reason.
like from that distance. 
And the Earth? Maybe not even visible with the naked eye.
I could turn off the light in my bedroom and be under the covers before the room got dark.
Last edited Sun Mar 24, 2013, 10:28 PM - Edit history (1)
I remember about ten years ago taking a leisurely stroll one sunny early Spring day in the Northern Virginia woods and, suddenly, the quiet was shattered by a tremendously loud roaring noise. I looked up and there, a couple thousand feet over my head, against the purest of blue skies was the sleek white triangle of the British Air Concorde taking its final flight back to England, which it reached about three hours later.
To make interstellar flight practical for humans, we will need to find a way to travel through space that is proportionately as great a leap forward as my walking pace to supersonic flight. But, some day, I think we will. It's just in us to do that sort of thing.
... the Voyagers might have been our first visitors to the star system nearest to ours. However, the voyagers weren't aimed toward Alpha-Centauri.
The Voyagers will get 'close' to other stars, as explained here:
We will have lost contact with the Voyagers long before then.
...so the silent lumps of metal will pass by those solar systems, perhaps being slightly deflected from their courses by a weak gravitational tug.
With millions, or maybe billions, of years of continuing travel, one of the Voyagers might be drawn into a random stellar system and fall into one of its stars. Or, there is an infinitesimal chance that the spacecraft would pass close to a planet or planetesimal, possibly even colliding. If the planet is large enough to have an atmosphere, then the 700 kg mass of our Voyager could leave a brief trail of light across a sky. Will that be in a sky observed by some 'living' form? Will some fragment of the destruction of our satellite strike the ground? Will the life there discover a fragment and marvel at the odd composition of its metals?
The creatures who sent out the message will never know the answers.
Thanks for the post IC.
That is all.
