Posted on 09/05/2013 7:41:16 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The solar system is travelling through much stormier skies than we thought, and might even be about to pop out of the huge gas cloud we have been gliding through for at least 45,000 years. That's the implication of a multi-decade survey of the interstellar wind buffeting the solar system, which has revealed an unexpected change in the wind's direction.
...
he fact that the wind is shifting over the span of mere decades means that the interior of the cloud is either unusually turbulent, or that the solar system is a mere 1000 or so years away from punching its way out.
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Since the 1970s, we've known that the solar system is moving through a cloud of interstellar gas about 30 light years across, out on the edge of the Milky Way galaxy. The sun's motion through the cloud creates an apparent wind of interstellar particles that slams into the heliosphere.
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"While there had been hints that something was changing in the environment of the sun, when we finally put all the historical data together it became clear that one can make a strong scientific statement that this change has actually occurred," says Frisch. What the change means is still up for debate. We could be nearing the cloud's edge, or we could still be in the thick of it, pushing our way through an interstellar storm.
"It's possible we're seeing a structure that is not necessarily an edge," says Robert Meier,... who helped make the original STP 72-1 measurements. "A change of direction of flow in a stream could mean you're near the bank, or that there's a rock in the middle of the stream or something like that. It's always harder to figure out what's going on when you're in the middle."
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
As per Wikipedia ...
... 0.3 atoms per cubic centimeter; less dense than the average for the interstellar medium in the Milky Way (0.5 atoms/cm3), though six times denser than the gas in the Local Bubble (0.05 atoms/cm3) which surrounds the local cloud. In comparison, Earth's atmosphere at the edge of space has 12 billion atoms per cubic centimeter, dropping to 52 million at 150 km.
Soooooo ... yeah. ( Emphasis mine ... footnotes redacted. )
Though it is interesting when one considers all the coincidences necessary for our existence at least from the galactic down to the solar and planetary scales.
I believe God created it all quite nicely.
that explains the smell
In “Brain Wave”, it wasn’t just human intelligence that increased dramatically. All species were affected the same way. IIRC, the story started with a rabbit caught in a trap. It started thinking much more clearly, and figured out how to escape.
You are correct, although Mr. Anderson didn't include in the story changes in the behavior of insects and bacteria.
oh Jesus don’t get the Planet X people going...
one of the house cats started talking in her sleep last night, should we be worried :/
... and how about those Broncos!
Ok, relevancy!
Suppose a hydrogen atom were a football. That gives it a diameter of say, 10 cm, versus 1 Angstrom, or 1 billion times as large on a linear scale. Then .3 atoms per cc translates to .3 footballs per cubic 10^9 centimeters, or cubic 10^4 km. So that’s 71000 footballs within the sphere with radius equal to the earth-moon distance, by my calculation.
Well hey, that’s a lot of footballs!
Can’t....resist....BUSH’S FAULT!!!
-PJ
Celebrating is more important than actually carrying the ball into the endzone.
Well, that is to say, if you expanded the scale of interstellar space by 1 billion in each direction, then the interstellar H atoms would be about the size of footballs, and there would be 71000 of them in the (unexpanded) sphere with earth at the center and the moon at the surface.
marker
It’s the Vogons. They’re putting their intergalactic highway through here.
Not if I get them first.
Mysterious Force Holds Back NASA Probe In Deep Space
The Telegraph (UK) | 2-10-2002 | Robert Matthews
Posted on 02/09/2002 6:34:49 PM PST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/625094/posts
Note: this topic is from . Thanks BenLurkin.
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Iron-60 keyword, chrono sort:
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