today i reached chapter six: the triumph of voyager. it's fascinating to hear about the life of these two robots, their discoveries and technical problems... and sagan's hope that we would continue receiving information for a long, long time.
over twenty years later, the voyagers are still making profound discoveries and, when i saw the following article about 'fluff', i felt that two moments -- when sagan first wrote this chapter, and this news -- come together, as if time were warped and the two moments touched.
click pic to source
'december 23, 2009: the solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud that physics says should not exist. in the dec. 24th issue of nature, a team of scientists reveal how NASA's voyager spacecraft have solved the mystery.
"using data from voyager, we have discovered a strong magnetic field just outside the solar system," explains lead author merav opher, a NASA heliophysics guest investigator from george mason university. "this magnetic field holds the interstellar cloud together and solves the long-standing puzzle of how it can exist at all."'
and
'NASA's two voyager probes have been racing out of the solar system for more than 30 years. they are now beyond the orbit of pluto and on the verge of entering interstellar space—but they are not there yet.'
... more at at NASA...
