Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2012 19:51:57 -0400
From: mark <whitroth at 5-cent.us>
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: [WSFA] Fare well, Voyager
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Excerpt:
Last week, in the corners of the Internet devoted to outer space, things
started to get a little, well, hot. Voyager 1, the man-made object
farthest away from Earth, was encountering a sharp uptick in the number
of a certain kind of energetic particles around it. Had the spacecraft
become the first human creation to "officially" leave the solar system?

It's hard to overstate how wild an accomplishment this would be: A
machine, built here on Earth by the brain- and handiwork of humans, has
sailed from Florida, out of Earth's orbit, beyond Mars, beyond the gas
giants of Jupiter and Saturn, and may now have left the heliosphere --
tiny dot in the universe beholden to our sun. Had it really happened?
How would we know?

We're not quite there yet, Voyager's project scientist and former head
of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, Edward Stone, told me. The spacecraft is
on its way out -- "it's leaving the solar system" -- but we don't know
how far it has to go or what that transition to interstellar space will
look like.
--- end excerpt ---

<http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/06/get-ready-because-voyager-i-is-this-close-to-leaving-our-solar-system/258456/>

Goddamn it, I need to finish my Famous Secret Theory, so I can follow
Voyager "in a suitable vehicle"....

         mark