FAR OUT

NASA’s Voyager Reaches the Unknown

Rocket scientists baffled.

NASA’s Voyager 1 probe has spent the last 35-plus years bringing us detailed images of the wonders of space. Now, it seems to have finally reached the end of the solar system, but instead of going into the interstellar void as expected, the satellite is bringing back some pretty weird readings (it gets complicated here with solar winds and magnetic field lines) as it sits in a sort of galactic waiting room, one that no one expected to be there. Rocket scientists are stunned, and struggling to understand just what it means, but they all agree we are closer than we’ve ever been to reaching the final frontier. Stamatios Krimigis, the author of the Science article that brought us this new information, says no one can know just what that new beyond might be: “I’m convinced that nature is far more imaginative than we are,” he said.