NASA has detected alien "space stuff" outside our solar system. “Interstellar material” - or “alien matter” was detected for the very first time at the very edge of world’s solar system by the Earth orbiting Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft. The matter is the building blocks of stars, planets and people but IBEX principal investigator David McComas told Fox News it had distinctly different properties to the kind found in our solar system. "We discovered this puzzle: matter outside our solar system doesn't look like material inside our solar system. It seems to be deficient in oxygen compared to neon," Mr McComas said. IBEX sensor This picture shows one of two IBEX sensors which record energetic neutral atoms. The measurments will help give scientists a 360 degree picture of the celestial sphere. Picture: NASA “It's really important to be measuring it.” The oxygen deficiencies (compared to our galaxy) could indicate that the sun was born in a different galactic neighbourhood than the one it currently inhabits. Alternatively it could be a sign that the oxygen is “locked” within other galactic materials like dust and ice. The IBEX’s mission is to map the boundary between the solar system and interstellar space by counting and measuring particles. In 2009 it witnessed the first-ever look at a solar wind crashing into Earth’s magnetosphere when it detected a mysterious “ribbon” of charged particles travelling at a million miles per hour from the sun. It also discovered a protective “bubble” known as a helioshphere that shields the earth from powerful cosmic rays in 2009. Read more: http://www.news.com.au/technology/s...em/story-fn5fsgyc-1226259148463#ixzz1l6AhGGA6 Does this imply s that our sun , and the planets like the earth might be coming from different Galaxy ?
arauca "Alien" material is a poor choice of phrase, the matter in question is simply of different chemical composition to that within our solar system. There are many places within our galaxy that have different mixes of "metals"(anything heavier than hydrogen and helium, plus traces of lithium), there are even whole clusters that have little metals at all. The gases in question could conceivably be coming from intergalactic space or they could simply be the outflows from long gone supernovas or they may be interstellar in origin. Our Earth was born in a gas and dust cloud similar to the Pillars of Hercules in the Orion Nebula and moved away from the vicinity over the last 4.5 billion years. GrumpyPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I agree with you. However after reading the article, I have to wonder how they can read so much into the history of the universe, by the small sample of atoms they are talking about finding. I guess they have to say something to justify the cost of the probe. I'm not finding this article very convincing.
I think it catches the attention of people enough that they get more interested than just reading that title. I do agree with you however but the media has always been doing strange eye catching things.
KilljoyKlown . There are several things we can tell about the history of the gas. For one thing, it includes neon, so we know the lower limit of the mass of the supernova that generated it and it precludes that it is primordial gas from the Big Bang. This tells us it probably originated within our own galaxy as there has not been enough time for it to come from any other(barring nearby Quasars aimed directly at our galaxy, that is). But being able to sense and identify the speed and composition of this gas was but a small part of the probe's abilities. You never know what will be possible when we learn about the Universe using these methods. I happen to like Tang and Velcro is a multi million dollar industry. Just developing the ability to put those probes up has been a big technological driver that has many benefits to society. GrumpyPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
The description used by the media is very misleading. It's not that the matter is different, but that the ratios of the elements found outside our solar system seem to differ from what we expected to find.
Perhaps it's me, but I don't understand this sentence: "It seems to be deficient in oxygen compared to neon." What kind of comparison is that? Neon never contains any oxygen. It's neon!
Oh, duh... I see Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I thought they meant that the gas contains little oxygen compared to how much oxygen neon contains. I still think they should have worded it better..
It seems to me that our solar system is the product of more than one supernova and in order to get all the elements making up our solar system at least one hyper-nova had to be involved. I would also think any combination of gases other than hydrogen and helium would have to be considered made in the Milky Way or any of the star clusters the Milky Way absorbed sense it's formation. Well you do have a good point here. But it really wasn't the information I had a problem with, just how it's being interpreted in the article.
The planets in our system seem to be unusually deficient in neon; the Sun has a normal amount , so it must have been lost during the process of planetary formation somehow. If neon is abundant in matter outside the Solar System, maybe there are planets out there with more neon than we have on Earth; a planet with a neon-rich atmosphere would have interesting aurorae, among other things.
