Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Interstellar travel is the hypothetical travel of spacecraft between star systems. Due to the vast distances between the Solar System and nearby stars, interstellar travel is not possible with current propulsion technologies. To reach stars within reasonable amount of time (decades or centuries), an interstellar spacecraft must reach a ...
Intergalactic travel is the hypothetical travel between galaxies. Because the Milky Way and its closest neighbors are separated by millions of light-years, any such venture would also require millions of years based on current physics. Thus, intergalactic travel is impossible within the human lifetime. The technology required to travel between ...
The interstellar medium is composed of multiple phases distinguished by whether matter is ionic, atomic, or molecular, and the temperature and density of the matter. The interstellar medium is composed primarily of hydrogen, followed by helium with trace amounts of carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. [1] The thermal pressures of these phases are in ...
Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause and entered interstellar space on August 25, 2012, making it the first spacecraft to do so. [9] [10] Two years later, Voyager 1 began experiencing a third wave of coronal mass ejections from the Sun that continued to at least December 15, 2014, further confirming that the probe is in interstellar space. [11]
Stars are literally moving targets on the time scales current technology might reach them. An interstellar probe is a space probe that has left—or is expected to leave—the Solar System and enter interstellar space, which is typically defined as the region beyond the heliopause. It also refers to probes capable of reaching other star systems.
The Voyager program is an American scientific program that employs two interstellar probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable alignment of the two gas giants Jupiter and Saturn and the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, to fly near them while collecting data for transmission back to Earth.
The Oort cloud (/ ɔːrt, ʊərt /), [1] sometimes called the Öpik–Oort cloud, [2] is theorized to be a vast cloud of icy planetesimals surrounding the Sun at distances ranging from 2,000 to 200,000 AU (0.03 to 3.2 light-years). [3][note 1][4] The concept of such a cloud was proposed in 1950 by the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, in whose honor ...
The Local Bubble, or Local Cavity, [3] is a relative cavity in the interstellar medium (ISM) of the Orion Arm in the Milky Way.It contains the closest of celestial neighbours and among others, the Local Interstellar Cloud (which contains the Solar System), the neighbouring G-Cloud, the Ursa Major moving group (the closest stellar moving group) and the Hyades (the nearest open cluster).