Deadly 50,000C ‘Wall of Fire’ surrounding our Solar System discovered by Nasa probe
A BUBBLE of super-hot gloop surrounds our Solar System – and a Nasa probe is stuck in it.
The giant wall of fire is made up of material ejected by our Sun and reaches temperatures of nearly 50,000C (90,000F).
Little is known about the scorching region at the edge of the Solar System, but Nasa is shedding light on it thanks to one of its deep space probes.
Voyager 2 crossed into interstellar space – the stuff between the stars in the Milky Way galaxy – late last year.
It was only the second man-made object to do so, after Voyager 1 crossed the boundary in 2012.
The first messages sent by Voyager 2 from the mysterious void reached Earth earlier this month.
They revealed a brutal hellscape filled with super-hot plasma clinging to the outer reaches of the Solar System.
"The Voyager probes are showing us how our Sun interacts with the stuff that fills most of the space between stars in the Milky Way galaxy," said Dr Ed Stone, project scientist for Voyager.
According to readings from Voyager 2, temperatures hit 49,427C (89,000F) as the spacecraft crossed the edge of the Solar System.
The probe appeared to weather the onslaught thanks to its heat shields.
However, Nasa admitted that the probe, currently over 11billion miles from Earth, appeared to be trapped within the plasma wall.
Instead of crossing into interstellar space, the probe was in a "transitional region" at the edge of the Solar System, Nasa said.
The region is made of incredibly hot, compact plasma that travelled there via solar winds – belches of hot material ejected by the Sun.
Readings of the plasma zone will continue to be sent back to Earth by Voyager 2 as part of Nasa investigations.
Nasa's deep space probes
Going where no machine has gone before...
Juno
- Launched: 5 August 2011
- Mission: Study Jupiter from its orbit
- Distance from Earth: 365million miles
New Horizons
- Launched: 19 January 2006
- Mission: Study Pluto. Now sent to outer Solar System
- Distance from Earth: 4.1billion miles
Voyager 1
- Launched: 5 September 1977
- Mission: Study Jupiter and Saturn. Now sent to outer Solar System
- Distance from Earth: 13billion miles
Voyager 2
- Launched: 20 August 1977
- Mission: Study the gas giants. Now sent to outer Solar System
- Distance from Earth: 13billion miles
The Voyager probes launched in 1977, and both flew by Jupiter and Saturn.
Voyager 2 changed course at Saturn in order to fly by Uranus and Neptune, performing the only close passes of those planets in history.
The Voyager probes completed their Grand Tour of the planets and began their interstellar mission to reach the outer Solar System in 1989.
Voyager 1, the faster of the two probes, is currently over 13.6billion miles from the Sun, while Voyager 2 is 11.3billion miles from the Sun.
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In other space news, Nasa unveiled plans earlier this month for a new space probe that will travel 92billion miles from Earth.
Watery ‘Super Earths’ may hide ‘unfathomably deep’ bottomless oceans – with alien life lurking inside, according to a recent report.
And, an ‘alien’ grain of dust fired at Earth by ancient exploding star has been found buried in Antarctica.
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