Humans Have Left the Solar System (Or Not)
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And no, this is not about Charlie Sheen.
Ba DUMP.
Thank you, no really, thank you! Try the gharghmey!
Where were we? Oh yeah: Humans have left the Solar System! (Okay, they say “may have left,” but dangit, we’re not scientists, Jim!)
NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft — the farthest-flung object created by human hands — has traveled beyond the sun’s sphere of influence and may even have left the solar system forever, a new study suggests.
On Aug. 25, 2012, 35 years after the Voyager 1 mission launched, Earth’s most distant spacecraft detected a sharp change in the intensity of fast-moving charged particles called cosmic rays, suggesting it had left the outermost reaches of the heliosphere marking the edge of the solar system.
“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, in a statement.
Here’s a helpful graphic from NASA:
Well, sorta helpful. Nice colors, anyway.
And hold up – NASA says, Not so fast:
