It's time to grab some Schlitz, St. Ides or Olde English and pour a forty: Voyager 2 has left our solar system for good. Voyager 2 first hit space in '77 and crossed the 'termination shock' -- the transition region between the bubble dominated by the sun's solar wind and interstellar space -- on August 30 of this year. To put it in perspective, Voyager 2 left Earth when swinging was cool and Star Wars movies ruled, whereas by the time Voyager 2 left the solar system, swinging got relegated to old folks in the 'burbs and Star Wars movies sucked.
But Voyager 2 ain't going out without giving us some sweet information. Voyager 1 crossed this same boundary in 2004, but Voyager 2 did it almost 1 billion miles closer to the sun, suggesting that something is compressing the bubble that contains the outermost reaches of solar wind -- which is generally considered the edge of the solar system.
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