New solar system paradigm required to explain IBEX data?

[michaelmozina]

http://www.ibex.swri.edu/

The first IBEX sky maps are complete and the science team is writing up the results right now. The observations are really extraordinary and they show some very surprising features that aren't in any of the current theories or models, so IBEX is a real mission of discovery, and it is certainly going to require a new paradigm to account for what we are seeing! The results are so good that I have been able to negotiate with Science Magazine - the largest circulation periodical in science - for six coordinated papers, including one with some outside observations. Anyway, we plan on submitting all the papers this month and the IBEX Special Issue should be published, in concert with a big NASA press conference, in October. Until then it's all embargoed, but I promise it will be worth the wait!

Emphasis mine.

Considering the nature of the mission, that's quite a tantalizing claim actually. I'll definitely buy that copy of Science Magazine.

 

[MeteorWayne]

michael, you really should have included who made the statement since you quoted his announcement

It was :

From Dave McComas, IBEX Principal Investigator

 

[EAK09]

Thanks for the post. I was wondering...
a) What specific hypothesis -- if any -- is IBEX poised to test? Any competing theories about anything there?
b) Voyager1 passed the heliopause in 2004, I believe. When is Voyager 2 scheduled to do likewise?
c) How fast is the sun traveling, relative to what? What things would be implied by different shapes of the heliopause?

 

[michaelmozina]

michael, you really should have included who made the statement since you quoted his announcement

It was :

From Dave McComas, IBEX Principal Investigator

Gah. That would have helped alright. Thanks.

 

[michaelmozina]

Thanks for the post. I was wondering...
a) What specific hypothesis -- if any -- is IBEX poised to test?

Well, it's poised to test pretty much all theories related to the solar interaction with the heliosphere.

Any competing theories about anything there?

Plenty!

b) Voyager1 passed the heliopause in 2004, I believe. When is Voyager 2 scheduled to do likewise?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program

As of April 2007, Voyager 1 was over 15.2 terameters (15.2 × 1012 meters, or 15.2 × 109 km, 101.4 AU, or 9.4 billion miles) from the Sun, and has thus entered the heliosheath, the termination shock region between the solar system and interstellar space (or the interstellar medium), a vast area where the Sun's influence has given way to that of the Milky Way galaxy in general.

As of September 2006, Voyager 2 is at a distance of around 80.5 AU (approximately 12 terameters) from the Sun, deep in the scattered disc, and traveling outward at roughly 3.3 AU a year. It is more than twice as far from the Sun as Pluto is. On December 10, 2007, instruments on board Voyager 2 sent data back to Earth indicating that the Solar System is asymmetrical. It has also reached the termination shock, about 10 billion miles from where Voyager 1 first crossed it.

c) How fast is the sun traveling, relative to what?

The question "relative to what" seems to be the important question.
http://www.astro.uu.nl/~strous/AA/en/an ... g.html#v16

The speed of the Sun relative to the CMB is now 1,328,000 km/h (plus or minus 9000 km/h) in the direction of the constellation of the Cup (just south of the Lion).

What things would be implied by different shapes of the heliopause?

I guess that depends on exactly what they observe.

 

[nimbus]

Thanks for the heads-up Michael. IBEX is my favorite mission and has been for a while

 

[michaelmozina]

http://www.ibex.swri.edu/

From Dave McComas:

This month we finished writing our five papers on the IBEX sky maps and first results and submitted them to Science Magazine. They are now in the peer review process, where the Science editors send them out to various outside scientists who review, comment on, and (hopefully) validate our analyses and work. We should get comments back from the editors and reviewers within the next few weeks, and we will make revisions as needed once we see them. Anyway, we got all our papers submitted to Science by the agreed-to date, so we expect that the IBEX Special Issue should be published, in concert with a big NASA press conference, in mid-October as planned. Until then the results are embargoed, but I have to tell you, they are really, really remarkable!

Gee, a special issue *and* a press conference. Now I'm intrigued. Any guesses as to their "remarkable" findings?

 

[nimbus]

... None here, but.. I can't wait!

 

[michaelmozina]

http://www.ibex.swri.edu/

Now Dave is just being a big tease....

Over the course of September we received and responded to the technical reviews of our set of papers that are slated to be published in Science Magazine. In general, these reviews were excellent! Just to share a small piece of one of them, it said "This report is a very clear, concise and well illustrated presentation of the first full-sky maps of energetic neutral atoms (ENA's) created in the outer heliosphere. The data, recorded by the IBEX satellite, are excellent, and those maps represent a major advance in heliospheric science, with potential applications to astrophysical plasmas in general. Both maps and energy spectra contain a wealth of information, and the maps have enough spatial resolution to unambiguously reveal _______________________. This spectacular ____________ calls for new ingredients in the models and is an exciting discovery. I recommend the publication without delay of this report, which contains details on the data as well as a very interesting preliminary analysis, and should interest a broad community." Sorry about the blanks in the above report, but these exciting results are embargoed until 15 October, when we will have a big press conference at NASA headquarters and Science will release the papers. I can hardly wait until everyone gets to see them!

In my case it's definitely working.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Just a note, a NASA TV News Conference is scheduled for Thursday Oct 15th at 2PM EDT (1800 UTC) to discuss the data, coincident with the release of the Science special issue.

 

[michaelmozina]

Just a note, a NASA TV News Conference is scheduled for Thursday Oct 15th at 2PM EDT (1800 UTC) to discuss the data, coincident with the release of the Science special issue.

Thanks for the heads up Wayne.

 

[MeteorWayne]

I noticed on the schedule today the time has been changed to 2:15 PM EDT.

 

[Ajboc]

They are certainly keeping a lid on things. I suppose since this will apparently change a lot of models, they want to get all of their research articles finalized before people try to pick it apart... In any case, I will be very interested in seeing what all the hubbub is about. And maybe space.com will get an article sooner than later?

Oh, and does anyone know what the final limit will be to hear from the Voyagers? They don't have unlimited energy and I'd imagine the communications are getting noisier as they travel away.

 

[MeteorWayne]

VOYAGER 1 ......VOYAGER 2
Power Off Plasma (PLS) Subsystem. off ....... off
PLS Heater off ....... off
Power Off Planetary Radio Astronomy Experiment (PRA) off ....... off
---------------------------
Terminate scan platform and Ultra Violet (UV) observations ~EOY 2010 ........ offf
Termination of Data Tape Recorder (DTR) operations ~2015* ........ 2007-248**
Termination of gyro operations ~2016 ....... ~2015
Initiate instrument power shutdown ~2020*** ........ ~2020***
Can no longer power any single instrument No earlier than 2025 ....... No earlier than 2025


* Limited by ability to capture 1.4 kbps data using a 70m/34m antenna array
In order to maximize the duration of the fields and particles data acquisition capability

** Voyager 2 DTR operations was no longer needed due to a failure on the high waveform receiver on the Plasma Wave Subsystem (PWS) on June 30th, 2002.

Termination of gyro operations ends the capability to calibrate the magnetometer instrument with magnetometer roll maneuvers (MAGROLs). These maneuvers are performed 6 times a year, on each spacecraft, and consist of a spacecraft attitude maneuver of 10 successive 360 degree turns about the roll axis. Data from a MAGROL allow the spacecraft magnetic field to be determined and subtracted from the magnetometer science data. This is important since the spacecraft magnetic field is larger than as the solar magnetic field being measured. The termination of gyro operations also means an end to the attitude maneuvers used to check the combined calibration of the Sun Sensor and the High Gain Antenna pointing direction for maintaining communications with the ground.

*** Science Instruments power shutdown order has not been determined.



The following experiments are expected to be operating by 2020:

Voyager 1: Low-Energy Charged Particles, Cosmic Ray Subsystem, Magnetometer and Plasma Wave Subsystem.

Voyager 2: Low-Energy Charged Particles, Cosmic Ray Subsystem, Magnetometer, Plasma Wave Subsystem and Plasma Subsystem.

 

[MeteorWayne]

They are certainly keeping a lid on things. I suppose since this will apparently change a lot of models, they want to get all of their research articles finalized before people try to pick it apart... In any case, I will be very interested in seeing what all the hubbub is about. And maybe space.com will get an article sooner than later?

I will also be watching, and take my infamous scribblenotes.

In addition, a week or so later I will get the special issue of Science, but I'll have to read the articles a few times to absorb and understand the information Science magazine hurts my brain sometimes :lol:

 

[michaelmozina]

They are certainly keeping a lid on things. I suppose since this will apparently change a lot of models, they want to get all of their research articles finalized before people try to pick it apart... In any case, I will be very interested in seeing what all the hubbub is about.

It's the secrecy aspect that really gets me. I love the anticipation. I suppose it must be quite a revelation otherwise we wouldn't need a press conference.

And maybe space.com will get an article sooner than later?

That is unlikely. This seems to be quite the secret.

Thanks Wayne for the explanation about the life expectation of the voyager systems.

 

[MeteorWayne]

News Conf on NASA TV about to start...

 

[Broomstacker]

Well, I see it made Fox news. They are referencing Space.com for this story!!


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,567020,00.html

 

[trumptor]

I thought this would produce a little more interest than it has. Its not explained by any current theories. Does anyone here have a guess as to what's causing the line of ionized atoms out there? I would have at least thought the 2012 people would be saying that its Nibiru (Niburu?) or something, haha.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Actually the data showed neutral (i.e. non-ionized) atoms- I'm not sure what it means which is why I have been silent.

 

[trumptor]

But the article said that there was a ribbon of "high energy emissions". I assumed these were ionized atoms instead of the neutral atoms coming in from outside the heliosphere. No?

 

[nimbus]

The news articles specifically say that the particles are products of solar wind & intergalactic stuff, and are neutral.

 

[trumptor]

The news articles specifically say that the particles are products of solar wind & intergalactic stuff, and are neutral.

I understood that that's what the whole shell of the heliosphere looked like except for the strange line of "high energy emissions" which was out of the ordinary because the resulting reaction from the ionized atoms from the solar wind and the intergalactic atoms weren't neutral atoms. And what I got from the article was that this anomaly was following along a galactic magnetic field line.

 

[MeteorWayne]

No, the emissions were from "Energetic Neutral Atoms" (direct quote from the News Conference).


From what I understood (which wasn't a lot, not my area of expertise) they said it was particles from the solar wind reflected from the heliopause (?) which were ions but recombined to become neutral atoms. Like I said, I figure it will take me a few reads through the articles in Science when it arrives to fully grok it.

 

[trumptor]

Ohhhh, ok. Sorry for my slowness

So, in layman's terms, the particles being "more energetic" would mean that this area of the heliopause is noticeably "warmer" for some reason?