The Universe May Be More Squishy Than Believed

Squishy PlanetsAccording to data from the unmanned Voyager spacecraft that was launched in 1977 that is now studying the edges of the hemisphere, it reveals that the solar system may not be a nice round shape once imagined. Instead, the data reveals that it may be squashed and oblong instead.

While studying the edges of the heliopsphere where it defines a huge magnetic buggle around our solar system which was crated by solar winds as it runs up against the thin gas in interstellar space.

Scientists think this indicates that the bubble carved into interstellar space by the heliosphere, which extends well past the distant orbit of Pluto, is not perfectly round, and the solar system is shaped a bit like an oblong.

“Imagine a balloon is being blown up by the solar wind. 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,” said Edward Stone of the California Institute of Technology, one of the scientists involved in the research.

The findings were published in the journal Nature.

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