NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region at the far reaches of our solar system that scientists feel is the final area the spacecraft has to cross before reaching
interstellar space.

Scientists refer to this new region as a magnetic highway for charged particles because our sun’s magnetic field lines are connected to interstellar magnetic field lines. This connection allows lower-energy charged particles that originate from inside our heliosphere — or the bubble of charged particles the sun blows around itself — to zoom out and allows higher-energy particles from outside to stream in. Before entering this region, the charged particles bounced around in all directions, as if trapped on local roads inside the heliosphere.

The Voyager team infers this region is still inside our solar bubble because the direction of the magnetic field lines has not changed. The direction of these magnetic field lines is predicted to change when Voyager breaks through to interstellar space. The new results were described at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco on Monday.

"Although Voyager 1 still is inside the sun’s environment, we now can taste what it’s like on the outside because the particles are zipping in and out on this magnetic highway," said Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "We believe this is the last leg of our journey to interstellar space. Our best guess is it’s likely just a few months to a couple years away. The new region isn’t what we expected, but we’ve come to expect the unexpected from Voyager."

Since December 2004, when Voyager 1 crossed a point in space called the termination shock, the spacecraft has been exploring the heliosphere’s outer layer, called the heliosheath. In this region, the stream of charged particles from the sun, known as the solar wind, abruptly slowed down from supersonic speeds and became turbulent. Voyager 1’s environment was consistent for about five and a half years. The spacecraft then detected that the outward speed of the solar wind slowed to zero.

The intensity of the magnetic field also began to increase at that time.

Voyager data from two onboard instruments that measure charged particles showed the spacecraft first entered this magnetic highway region on July 28, 2012. The region ebbed away and flowed toward Voyager 1 several times. The spacecraft entered the region again Aug. 25 and the environment has been stable since.

"If we were judging by the charged particle data alone, I would have thought we were outside the heliosphere," said Stamatios Krimigis, principal investigator of the low-energy charged particle instrument, based at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md. "But we need to look at what all the instruments are telling us and only time will tell whether our interpretations about this frontier are correct."

Spacecraft data revealed the magnetic field became stronger each time Voyager entered the highway region; however, the direction of the magnetic field lines did not change.  

"We are in a magnetic region unlike any we’ve been in before — about 10 times more intense than before the termination shock — but the magnetic field data show no indication we’re in interstellar space," said Leonard Burlaga, a Voyager magnetometer team member based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "The magnetic field data turned out to be the key to pinpointing when we crossed the termination shock. And we expect these data will tell us when we first reach interstellar space."

Voyager 1 and 2 were launched 16 days apart in 1977. At least one of the spacecraft has visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object, about 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) away from the sun. The signal from Voyager 1 takes approximately 17 hours to travel to Earth. Voyager 2, the longest continuously operated spacecraft, is about 9 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) away from our sun. While Voyager 2 has seen changes similar to those seen by Voyager 1, the changes are much more gradual. Scientists do not think Voyager 2 has reached the magnetic highway.

The Voyager spacecraft were built and continue to be operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The Voyager missions are a part of NASA’s Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

For more information about the Voyager spacecraft, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/voyager and http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov.

Illustration – The Sun’s Southern Wind Flows Northward:  This artist’s concept shows how NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is bathed in solar wind from the southern hemisphere flowing northward. This phenomenon creates a layer just inside the outer boundary of the heliosphere, the giant bubble of solar ions surrounding the sun. If the outside pressure were symmetrical, the streams from the sun’s northern hemisphere above the plane of the planets would all turn northward and the streams from the southern hemisphere would all turn southward.

However, the interstellar magnetic field presses more strongly on the boundary in the southern hemisphere, forcing some of the solar wind from the south that otherwise would have gone southward to be deflected northward to where Voyager 1 is. On July 21, 2012, the magnetometer instrument indicated that Voyager 1 had entered a region where the wind is from the southern hemisphere. Scientists interpret this to mean that the spacecraft is in the final region before reaching interstellar space because the southern wind streams have to flow out and around all of the northern wind to reach Voyager 1’s location.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week and as reported by the UK’s Daily Mail.

The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists,
reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no
discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.

This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.

The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued  quietly on the internet without any media fanfare.  Until The Daily Mail story; it had not been reported.

This stands in sharp contrast  to the release of the previous  figures six months ago, which went only to the end of 2010 – a very warm year.

Ending the data then means it is possible to show a slight warming trend since 1997, but 2011 and the first eight months of 2012 were much cooler, and thus this trend is erased.

Click here to read more from The Daily Mail.

Yes, Senator James M. Inhofe from Oklahoma was right on the facts from the beginning. 

The University of Texas at Austin says it has investigated and found no evidence of research misconduct in a study that found adult children from “gay” families are “more apt to report being unemployed, less healthy, more depressed, more likely to have cheated on a spouse or partner, smoke more pot, had trouble with the law…” than children from traditional mom-and-dad households.

“The University of Texas at Austin has determined that no formal investigation is warranted into the allegations of scientific misconduct lodged against associate professor Mark Regnerus regarding his July article in the journal Social Science Research,” the school announced yesterday.

It said a four-member advisory panel of senior university faculty members was consulted and an outside consultant, Alan Price, was asked to review the charges as part of the university inquiry into allegations made by Scott Rosensweig in a letter to the school.

The conclusion was that the issues raised fell under the clause that “ordinary errors, good faith differences in interpretations of or judgments of data, scholarly or political disagreements, good faith personal or professional opinions, or private moral and ethical behavior or views are not misconduct.”

The university said it considers the issue closed, after school Research Integrity Officer Robert Peterson told officials “none of the allegations of scientific misconduct put forth by Mr. [Rosensweig was] substantiated either by physical data, written materials, or by information provided during the interviews.”

Regnerus wrote, “The differences, it turns out, were numerous. For instance, 28 percent of the adult children of women who’ve had same-sex relationships are currently unemployed, compared to 8 percent of those from married mom-and-dad families. Forty percent of the former admit to having had an affair while married or cohabiting, compared to 13 percent of the latter. Nineteen percent of the former said they were currently or recently in psychotherapy for problems connected with anxiety, depression, or relationships, compared with 8 percent of the latter. And those are just three of the 25 differences I noted.”

He said the bottom line of the study is that “social scientists, parents, and advocates would do well from here forward to avoid simply assuming the kids are all right.”

Officials with the Alliance Defending Freedom said the New Family Structures Study “suggests that differences exist in outcomes for young adults raised in various environmental with different family experiences.”

“This comprehensive, peer-reviewed research study consisted of leading scholars and researchers across disciplines and ideological lines in a spirit of civility and reasoned inquiry. We agree with the AT-Austin inquiry’s conclusions…”

Click here for more from World Net Daily. 

About the top photo: This is the first gay couple granted legal rights to adopt children, Hollow Falls, VA late 1920’s as found on the "Finding Myself" blog, click here for "100 Years of Gay Couples: Part one 1875-1955. The second photo above is of the Tulsa Equality Center on 3rd Street in downtown Tulsa.