NASA’s Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to enter interstellar space after crossing the heliosphere’s boundary on August 25, 2012, and since then, it has transmitted back some fascinating data, including a faint, monotone plasma hum. More specifically, this is the faint, persistent hum of interstellar gas, and will allow scientists to better understand how the interstellar medium interacts with the solar wind. Read more for two videos and additional information.
Think of the interstellar medium as a quiet, gentle rain, but when there’s a solar outburst, it becomes a sudden lightning burst before returning to its previous state. Researcher Stella Ocker believes that there is more low-level activity in this interstellar gas than previously thought, enabling researchers to track the spatial distribution of plasma.
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We have some ideas about how far Voyager will need to get to start seeing more pure interstellar waters, so to speak. But we’re not entirely sure when we’ll reach that point. They’ve only been seen about once a year, so relying on these kind of fortuitous events meant that our map of the density of interstellar space was kind of sparse. It’s virtually a single tone. And over time, we do see it change – but the way the frequency moves around tells us how the density is changing,” said Stella Ocker, a Ph.D. student at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and the newest member of the Voyager team.