IBEX: New Find Yields Results of 'Alien' Atoms from Interstellar Space

I don't have time to put alot of effort into this thread, put I thought I could put it up here considering it's news.

Using the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), NASA has sampled the galactic wind that has traveled from outside our solar system. Four types of atoms were found to be different from what we have in our Solar System

Here's the official NASA article. I'll just jump directly to the part of the results...

The results? It's an alien environment out there: the material in that galactic wind doesn't look like the same stuff our solar system is made of.

"We've directly measured four separate types of atoms from interstellar space and the composition just doesn't match up with what we see in the solar system," says Eric Christian, mission scientist for IBEX at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "IBEX's observations shed a whole new light on the mysterious zone where the solar system ends and interstellar space begins."

More than just helping to determine the distribution of elements in the galactic wind, these new measurements give clues about how and where our solar system formed, the forces that physically shape our solar system, and even the history of other stars in the Milky Way.

IBEX: Glimpses of the Interstellar Material Beyond our Solar System

There's also some informational videos in the source article. Interesting news, sounds exciting and very intruiging.

we finally finish filling up our own periodic table and then new atoms "alien" show up.
gotta catch them all I guess?

seriously though, I wonder how these atoms are different from our atoms? different ratios of protons and neutrons?

Appears to be some confusion. Not new elements. Just unexpected ratios of known elements.
Watching the vid helps.

Edit: for those who can't watch. Heliosphere pushes against galactic wind, composed of hydrogen, helium, neon, and oxygen ions. Some galactic wind particles get through to a satellite. The ratio of the different elements is different than expected.

What I gathered from the video is that only neutral atoms can penetrate the heliopause, these would be stable atoms, of oxygen like 99.8% of our oxygen, or 16O, 8 electrons for 8 protons. I believe this implies that unstable isotopes of oxygen are kept out, but the space around our solar system has much less oxygen. They imply alien space, or I speculatively say, our solar system is a stable oxygen hoard.

I don't believe the links got into details of what they mean by different atoms because they never mention unstable isotopes, only imply.

Oxygen isotopes range from 3 stable; 16O, 17O, and 18O, 2 unstable; 13O and 15O, and 14 radioisotopes, with very short half lifes. But I couldn't find any isotope references (isotopics ), even with Neon, the only other element really used as a comparison. I don't fully understand all of the dynamics that cause isotopes of elements, (I thought chemical, energy, or heat) perhaps it is the ratio of the amount of oxygen to neon that is stealing the electrons from oxygen, making 13O to decay to nitrogen13, but they didn't talk about any of this!