Our solar system is the shape of a squashed rectangle, according to distant space pro

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Our solar system is the shape of a squashed rectangle, according to distant space probe

Last updated at 10:06 AM on 03rd July 2008



The solar system may not be a nice round shape, but rather a squashed rectangle, scientists said today.

They made their conclusion after studying data from the Voyager 2 spacecraft exploring the solar system's outer limits.

Launched in 1977 along side Voyager 1 the unmanned probes are now studying the edges of the heliosphere, the huge magnetic 'bubble' around our solar system. It is far outside the orbit of Pluto and created by the solar wind as it runs up against the thin gas in interstellar space.

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An artist rendition of the main bodies of the solar system. The Voyager 2 probe has recently crossed the magnetic 'bubble' at the edge of the system

The solar wind is made up of electrically charged particles blown into space in all directions by the sun. The boundary between the heliosphere and the rest of interstellar space is known as the 'termination shock.'

In August 2007 Voyager 2 crossed this boundary 7.8 billion miles from the sun.

Voyager 1 had already crossed the boundary in December 2004. It is about 10 billion miles away from Voyager 1 and almost a billion miles farther from the sun.

Scientists think this indicates that the bubble is pushed in closer to the sun by the local interstellar magnetic field where Voyager 2 made its crossing. This makes it more of a squashed rectangular shape rather than a circle.

'Imagine a balloon is being blown up by the solar wind,' Edward Stone from the California Institute of Technology told the journal Nature.

'You might imagine that if you took a balloon, which is mainly spherical, and pushed it against the wall, it would be blunted on one side. That's what has happened with the heliosphere.'

The Voyager spacecraft were launched with a mission to fly by and observe the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn. The two spacecraft then continued their mission into the outer solar system.

They are flying through remote, cold and dark conditions, powered by long-life nuclear batteries in the absence of solar energy.


Our solar system is egg-shaped, according to distant space probe | Mail Online