Today’s physics news: Micropumps and Nasa’s Voyager

Physics news for 5 September 2012.

TTP innovation makes £1m and wins IOP prize

A novel micropump developed by The Technology Partnership plc (TTP) in the Cambridge hi-tech cluster is one of four UK innovations handed a landmark award from the Institute of Physics (IOP). The device is now being manufactured on a product line and incorporated into a range of medical devices. It has only been in commercial circulation for 1.5 years and has already earned the company more than £1 million in additional revenue. The IOP described this and three other technologies honoured in its inaugural Innovation Awards as “market-transforming.”

Business Weekly

Nasa’s Voyager ‘dancing on the edge’ of outer space

Nasa’s Voyager 1, launched in 1977, is nearing the edge of the solar system and may already be “dancing on the edge” of outer space, the scientists behind the project said on Tuesday. In a lecture marking the approaching 35th anniversary of the Voyager project, Ed Stone said it could be “days, months or years” before it finally breaks into interstellar space. Earlier this year a surge in a key indicator fuelled hopes that the craft was nearing the so-called heliopause, which marks the boundary between our solar system and outer space.

The Telegraph