NASA scientists find outer boundary of solar system, call it hydrogen wall
Sunday, August 12, 2018 IST
HIGHLIGHTS
*NASA scientists say a boundary separates our solar system from rest of the space
*They have named the boundary as hydrogen wall
*NASA report is based on data sent by its New Horizons spacecraft
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The scientists working at NASA think that they have found the outer boundary of our solar system. It was earlier thought to be not properly defined. Now, they have said that their New Horizons spacecraft can see that invisible boundary. They have named it the "hydrogen wall." It is located at the edge of our solar system.
The hydrogen wall has been described by the scientists as the place where bubbles of solar wind cease to exist. The mass of interstellar matter here is very small but strong enough to not let the solar winds to pass through. At the same time, it is not so strong to bust through the solar wind build up. It acts like a wall pressing the solar winds inward.
The sun keeps throwing out jets of matter and energy in the form of solar winds. They travel far beyond the orbit of Pluto. Till now scientists believed that the solar winds, beyond Pluto, merged with the galactic energy in space within our Milky Way galaxy.
New evidence points that the matter and energy carried by the solar winds accumulate in a particular region building hydrogen wall. It is the region where solar matter builds a formation with the interstellar matter. Hydrogen is the most common matter in space.
The Sun is almost wholly composed of hydrogen. It burns to give energy and helium, an inert gas on the sun.Data sent by New Horizons have made NASA scientists believe that the outer boundary of the solar system must be made up of hydrogen. An analysis of the latest evidence gathered by New Horizons was published by the NASA scientists earlier this week.
However, the scientists have warned that the discovery may not be final. They said that New Horizons could actually have detected ultraviolet rays and not a hydrogen wall, as the scientists believe.
New Horizons was launched in January 2006. It went past Pluto in 2015
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