Voyager Heading Out Beyond the Solar System
One of the blogs I follow is Phil Platt’s Bad Astronomy, which is hosted on the Discover Magazine site.
A few days ago, Bad Astronomy featured an update on Voyager, launched in 1977, which is currently heading out beyond the solar system. Here’s an excerpt from Phil’s post, titled The wind is no longer at Voyager’s back:
” … There is gas between the stars, which astronomers call the interstellar medium. The solar wind blows out into it, slowing. There is a region, over a billion kilometers thick, where the solar wind plows to a halt, creating a roughly spherical shell around the solar system. That’s called the heliosheath, and it looks like Voyager 1 is now solidly inside it. In fact, it’s been there for four months or so; the scientists measuring the solar wind speed noticed it dropped to 0 back in June, but it took a while to make sure this wasn’t just some local eddy in the flow. It’s not. Voyager 1 now has calm seas ahead.
But the probe is still moving outward at 60,000 kph (38,000 mph). In a few more years it’ll leave the heliosheath behind, and when that happens it will truly be in interstellar space, the vast and nearly empty region between the stars. At that moment it will be the first human device ever to truly leave the solar system and enter the great stretches of the galaxy beyond. …
To read the full article, click here.
Call me a terrible sentimentalist, which I probably am, but I do get more than a little teared up thinking about Voyager heading out there into the vasty deeps of space beyond the solar system. I get the loneliness of it, but also the grandeur of both the enterprise and the magnitude of space. And of course, all the “what if” imaginings of what that “beyond” might bring are the very stuff of science fiction!
Arguably, the reality can beat most of that fiction into the proverbial cocked hat (great expression, huh?!) but there’s still a few scifi stories out there that capture my imagination in terms of what the human experience of space “might be.”
One of my favourites is CJ Cherryh’s Downbelow Station.
How about you? Do you have a “definitive” science fiction story?
Downbelow Station would be right up there, but I would also like to put a plug in for “The Moon Goddess And The Sun” by Donald Kingsbury, as well as novels like “Footfall” by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
I would also like to give “Earth Abides” by George R Stewart a mention.
Thank you, Andrew—I shall have to check out your recommendations. I am embarrassed that I have not read any of them!