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A Major Step Forward in Explaining the Ribbon in Space Discovered by NASAs IBEX Mission

724750main1_1_AP_IBEX_combined_1.74-670.jpg

The vast edges of our solar system - the boundary at the edge of our heliosphere where material streaming out from the sun interacts with the galactic material - is essentially invisible. It emits no light and no conventional telescope can see it. However, particles from inside the solar system bounce off this boundary and neutral atoms from that collision stream inward. Those particles can be observed by instruments on NASAs Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX). Since those atoms act as fingerprints for the boundary from which they came, IBEX can map that boundary in a way never before done. In 2009, IBEX saw something in that map that no one could explain: a vast ribbon dancing across this boundary that produced many more energetic neutral atoms than the surrounding areas.
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Blobrana


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IBEX Scientists Isolate Mysterious "Ribbon" of Energy and Particles that Wraps Around Solar System Boundary

In a paper to be published in the April 10, 2011, issue of The Astrophysical Journal, scientists on NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission, including lead author Nathan Schwadron and others from the University of New Hampshire, isolate and resolve the mysterious "ribbon" of energy and particles the spacecraft discovered in the heliosphere - the huge bubble that surrounds our solar system and protects us from galactic cosmic rays.
The finding, which overturns 40 years of theory, provides insight into the fundamental structure of the heliosphere, which in turn helps scientists understand similar structures or "astrospheres" that surround other star systems throughout the cosmos.
The ribbon of energy was captured using ultra-high sensitive cameras that image energetic neutral atoms (instead of photons of light) to create maps of the boundary region between our solar system and the rest of our galaxy.

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