Word: solarized
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...view of that distant world. Now the surprisingly durable robot, whose working parts were designed by its builder, TRW, to last only two or three years, has scored another remarkable achievement. Propelled by a gravitational boost from Jupiter, it has become the first man-made object to leave the solar system and enter the realm of the stars...
...event, said Astronomer Carl Sagan, "is filled with symbolism. Lots of things have entered the solar system during its 5 billion-year history-comets, asteroids, every sort of cosmic debris. This is the first time, however, that something associated with life and intelligence has left...
...intercepted by intelligent beings, Sagan and a Cornell colleague, Frank Drake, along with Sagan's former wife Linda, an artist, created a gold-anodized aluminum plaque that was affixed to the spacecraft's side. The plaque shows a nude male and female, a representation of the solar system, plus other scientific clues that might help inhabitants of other worlds trace Pioneer's origins...
...between Pioneer and Barnard's star, a small, cool, red celestial object that does not seem to have life-supporting planets. Still, as scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center note, Pioneer should survive indefinitely in the vacuum of interstellar space. The machine may even outlast the solar system itself, which is expected to expire in another 5 billion years when the sun swells into a red giant and engulfs the inner planets...
...surprise of Pioneer's voyage so far is the discovery that the boundary of the sun's atmosphere, or heliosphere, the bubble of particles blown into space by the solar wind, is much farther out than supposed. Researchers had expected the region to end near Jupiter's orbit. But even now the spacecraft's instruments show no decline in the heliosphere's strength, only what seems to be a swelling and contraction connected with cycles of solar activity...