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246 points world2vec | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.238s | source
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cooper_ganglia ◴[] No.44357881[source]
I remember being in school in 2006 and being told that outside of our solar system is a "wall of fire" that we would never be able to cross.

I don't know if any of this info was speculated at that point in time, but it turns out that teacher was at least partially correct!

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1. TeaBrain ◴[] No.44370441[source]
It's not a new idea. The posted article is just about Voyager apparently observing the phenomena more closely. Voyager 1 had already reached the termination shock of the heliosphere in 2004 and Voyager 2 in 2007. The heliosphere containing a heliosheath, past the boundary of the termination shock, composed of compressed superhot solar winds had been hypothesized, due to the compression of the solar winds that begins at the termination shock.

Reading the article, the wall is referring to the heliopause, which is the boundary past the heliosheath. Also, it looks like both voyagers traveled past this over a decade ago.