Mission News  Text Size  Probes Suggest Magnetic Bubbles at
Solar System Edge  Full image and caption  Browse version of
image  While using a new computer model to analyze Voyager data,
scientists found the sun's distant magnetic field is made up of
bubbles approximately 100 million miles (160 million kilometers)
wide. The bubbles are created when magnetic field lines
reorganize. The new model suggests the field lines are broken up
into self-contained structures disconnected from the solar
magnetic field. The findings are described in the June 9 edition
of the Astrophysical Journal.  Like Earth, our sun has a
magnetic field with a north pole and a south pole. The field
lines are stretched outward by the solar wind, a stream of
charged particles emanating from the star that interacts with
material expelled from others in our corner of the Milky Way
galaxy. The Voyager spacecraft, more than 9 billion miles (14
billion kilometers) away from Earth, are traveling in a boundary
region. In that area, the solar win