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I've been reading these articles for at least ten years now as Voyager has crossed various different "edge of the solar system" boundaries.

There's still a fair few people working on Voyager, and they don't have much to do now except stare at slightly different types of vacuum, so they feel the need to issue a press release every couple of years.

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This actually has scientific significance though. There is no reason to start throwing jabs at scientists related to this research because you're not interested.

I'm not really throwing jabs, I'm being mildly facetious. Still, the "we're nearly at the edge of the solar system" stories have been coming for a long time. From 2000:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/12/001219073936.ht...

The Voyager 1 spacecraft, the farthest human-made object from Earth, may reach the beginning of his boundary region between early next year and the end of 2003

Now, that was the termination shock, this is the heliopause. Next comes the bow shock.

If a discovery last month by IBEX (an earth-orbit satellite with sensors aimed at mapping the interstellar boundary) holds up, it seems that the sun doesn't have a bow shock after all: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ibex/news/nobowshock.html

Apparently not?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bow_shock#Bow_shock_theory_for_...

grumble grumble grumble

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