Hacker Neue

Preferences
whycome parent
30K to 50K K? K. It’s not clear what the range represents. Were they polling and those are max and min values they got? Was that their range of uncertainty because it’s hard to accurately measure there?

Also, I hate the ambiguity of a title that references “Voyager Spacecraft” so it’s unclear if it was one or both.

Karawebnetwork
First paragraph of the article:

"In 1977, NASA launched the Voyager probes to study the Solar System's edge, and the interstellar medium between the stars. One by one, they both hit the "wall of fire" at the boundaries of our home system, measuring temperatures of 30,000-50,000 kelvin (54,000-90,000 degrees Fahrenheit) on their passage through it."

whycome OP
That paragraph is the problem. It doesn't actually explain it. Were they continuously polling temps and reached as low as 30K and as high as 50K? If the 'wall of fire' is based on temps, did they have a continuous rise? what was the temp just outside the 'wall'?
Y_Y
Small k for kilo-, big K for kelvin.

I skimmed the links that TFA provided and couldn't find the source of that figure. With rare space plasmas near shocks it's typical to have non-thermal distributions where the temperature isn't well defined. I don't think it's anything to get to excited about without having a proper article from NASA instead of IFL slop.

whycome OP
So it's more the temperature range uncertainty? is that a product of the environment (and with few particles one can actually measure) or a product of the measurement apparatus?

This item has no comments currently.