Related papers: Voyager 2 enters interstellar space
If space is compact, then a traveller twin can leave Earth, travel back home without changing direction and find her sedentary twin older than herself. We show that the asymmetry between their spacetime trajectories lies in a topological…
It is shown that space travel, even in the most distant future, will remain confined to our own planetary system, and a similar conclusion will hold forth for any other civilization, no matter how advanced it might be, unless those…
The first interstellar object to be discovered, 1I/'Oumuamua, exhibited various unusual properties as it was tracked on its passage through the inner solar system in 2017/2018. In terms of the potential scientific return, a spacecraft…
The outer heliosphere is a dynamic region shaped largely by the interaction between the solar wind and the interstellar medium. While interplanetary magnetic field and plasma observations by the Voyager spacecraft have significantly…
Because of the dynamic nature of the interstellar medium, the Sun should have encountered a variety of different interstellar environments in its lifetime. As the solar wind interacts with the surrounding interstellar medium to form a…
Speculations that encounters with interstellar clouds modify the terrestrial climate have appeared in the scientific literature for over 85 years. This article introduces a series of articles that seek to give substance to these…
Over the recent past, the galactic environment of the Sun has differed substantially from today. Sometime within the past ~130,000 years, and possibly as recent as ~56,000 years ago, the Sun entered the tenuous tepid partially ionized…
The ease of interstellar rocket travel is an issue with implications for the long term fate of our own and other civilizations and for the much-debated number of technological civilizations in the Galaxy. We show that the physical barrier…
The twin paradox is the best known thought experiment associated with Einstein's theory of relativity. An astronaut who makes a journey into space in a high-speed rocket will return home to find he has aged less than a twin who stayed on…
Measurements made with the Voyager 1 spacecraft indicate that significant levels of compressive fluctuations exist in the inner heliosheath. Some studies have already been performed with respect to the mirror-mode instability in the…
We report the detection of Kepler-47, a system consisting of two planets orbiting around an eclipsing pair of stars. The inner and outer planets have radii 3.0 and 4.6 times that of the Earth, respectively. The binary star consists of a…
Are time-travels possible? is the past still existing? and is the future already existing? We try to give an answer to these an other questions concerning the properties of time and the close connection (but deep physical difference)…
Twins travelling at constant relative velocity will each see the other's time dilate leading to the apparent paradox that each twin believes the other ages more slowly. In a finite space, the twins can both be on inertial, periodic orbits…
The Spitzer Space Telescope operated for over 16 years in an Earth-trailing solar orbit, returning not only a wealth of scientific data but, as a by-product, spacecraft and instrument engineering data which will be of interest to future…
Orbits of 44 close and fast visual binaries are computed using the latest speckle observations; 23 orbits are determined for the first time, the rest are revisions, some quite substantial. Six combined orbits use radial velocities. The…
NASA's first two deep space missions, Pioneers 10 and 11, have been travelling through the outer solar system for three decades. A slight deviation from their calculated trajectories presents an as yet unsolved scientific mystery. The use…
The definition of nearby star systems is incomplete without an understanding of the dynamical interaction between the stars and ambient interstellar material. The Sun itself has been immersed in the Local Bubble interior void for millions…
Launched more than thirty years ago and now drifting in space with no further contact, the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft are currently at the center of a small but developing concern: are they under the influence of an anomalous acceleration…
Fewer than 20 transiting Kepler planets have periods longer than one year. Our early search of the Kepler light curves revealed one such system, Kepler-1654 b (originally KIC~8410697b), which shows exactly two transit events and whose…
In this Letter, we provide constraints on the direction and magnitude of the pristine (i.e., unperturbed by the interaction with the Sun) local interstellar magnetic field. The constraints are based on analysis of the interstellar magnetic…