one bold step...

Spent my lunchtime run up Arthur's seat thinking about voyager 2.

It's heading into cosmic purgatory apparently. After drifting for decades on solar winds, it's finally reached the outer limits of our solar system before it heads out into unknown interstellar space.

Since 20th August 1977 (when I was about 4 months old) it's travelled 11 billion miles and visited loads of tourist spots: Saturn's rings, Jupiter and several of Jupiter's moons, such as...

Amalthea (the huffy spoilt first moon),
Europa (the one we've mortgaged to refund the banks),
Callisto (I think this one married Harrison Ford?)
Ganymede (there's a pub there named after Tom Baker)

Now however, it's slowing down. It's entering the stagnation region in the outermost layers of our solar system, skimming along a bubble border of charged particles called the Heliosphere. "Voyager 1 is plying the celestial seas in a region similar to Earth's doldrums, where there is very little wind" so says some NASA fleeced geek most probably called "Hal" in California.

It could break through this final frontier anytime from the next few months to the next few years. The magnetic fields have doubled in these peripheral edges, as pressure from interstellar space mounts. Nasa says to compare this to a traffic jam. I find that a little bit of a clunky metaphor. What's commuting to the epic forces of the universe?

A better comparison (and vainer) would be to compare it with where my head is today instead. As the days tick down to when I leave my job I seem to be moving through the doldrums with double the pressure too. The similarities don't end there.

According to Nasa, "during the past year, the intensity of these energetic particles has been declining, as though they are leaking out into interstellar space. The particles are now half as abundant as they were during the previous five years."

I'm SKINT, that's what's been happening to all my money, it's been leaking out like charged particles into outer space as I move away from my source of income. Oh my god, I have a satellite soul twin. Can I fall in love with a distant metal object 11 billion years away? I always seem to fall for distant types..

"At the same time, Voyager has detected a 100-fold increase in the intensity of high-energy electrons from elsewhere in the galaxy diffusing into our solar system from outside, which is another indication of the approaching boundary."

Liking the idea of high-energy electrons as we both approach the boundaries.

70 days to go for me. Not sure how much longer for Voyager 2, or what happens afterwards for either of us. Hope it's better, we've lasted this long at least...