Ribbon In The Sky = Million Degree Cloud Of Interstellar Gas
Monday, May 24th, 2010In case anyone was worried.
Scientists from the Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Southwest Research Institute, and Boston University suggest that the ribbon of enhanced emissions of energetic neutral atoms, discovered last year by the NASA Small Explorer satellite IBEX, could be explained by a geometric effect coming up because of the approach of the Sun to the boundary between the Local Cloud of interstellar gas and another cloud of a very hot gas called the Local Bubble. If this hypothesis is correct, IBEX is catching matter from a hot neighboring interstellar cloud, which the Sun might enter in a hundred years.
We are unclear on what might happen when the sun passes into the cloud, but if it means this song is relevant again we are willing to deal with the side effects.