Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Image credit: ROOM, the Space Journal of Asgardia

There is need to redefine the edge of the solar system. That’s the outcome of new work by two leading space scientists. They present a theory that the Milky Way’s gravity, including its dark matter, redraws the Sun’s frontier.

Moreover, it allows the Solar Lagrange points L1 and L2 to form “portals” that funnel interstellar visitors into the system, perhaps capturing them for future study.

The solar system’s gravitational frontier extends to nearly 3.8 light-years from the Sun, they contend, roughly 241,000 astronomical units (AU), a distance that brings the “edge” of the solar system to within the same scale as the separation between neighboring stars.

That frontier may be a region defined not by a sharp boundary but by a “complex dance among forces, energies and trajectories,” they write.

For more details, go to my new Space.com story – “It’s time to reassess the size of our solar system, scientists say” – at

https://www.space.com/astronomy/solar-system/its-time-to-reassess-the-size-of-our-solar-system-scientists-say

A universe of complex dances among forces, energies and trajectories.
Image credit: ESO/B. Tafreshi/twanight.org