Voyager 1, the deep space probe launched in 1977 and thought to have left the Solar System hasn’t entirely escaped the parts of space where Sol holds sway.
So says a new contribution to The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Triangulation of the interstellar magnetic field .
Boffins have debated whether Voyager 1 has left the Solar System for a few years now, after NASA declared it could no longer detect direct evidence of the solar wind. The absence of the stream of particles hurtling out from the sun was taken as evidence Voyager 1 had left the solar system and entered the interstellar medium. But after revisiting Voyager data, the new paper suggests some odd magnetic field readings mean the probe is passing through “a more distorted magnetic field just outside the heliopause, which is the boundary between the solar wind and the interstellar medium.”
via The Register
