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Farthest Human-Made Object: First Quarter Century

Posted by Hemos on from the marking-time dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The NASA Astrobiology Magazine reports today the 25th anniversary of the Voyager I launch, now the farthest human-made object at 93 Sun-Earth distances (93 AU), or 12 light-hours away. Expected battery life to 2020. The fascinating part is that gold record of civilization, which is a strange audio mix of sentimental kisses [wav file, let ET phone home that way] and perhaps the most dated picture of DNA. Some progress there. Voy 1 will likely confuse even modern earthlings-- much less ET. Case in point: In 2002, can we understand that 70's show, when the Polish greeting memorialized as "Welcome, creatures from beyond the outer world"? Unlike those ET creatures we meet daily from the inner world?"

4 of 388 comments (clear)

  1. It's a sad thing this Voyager thing really by l0ungeb0y · · Score: 0, Troll

    Gee, a giant hunk of metal with a computer that makes my palm pilot look fantastic is dominating all our later efforts 25 years ago.

    No, I'm not poo-pooing on Voyager, you go lil guy.

    But, I want to take a crap all over NASA and the utter inability to best Voyager in the 25 years of innovation since. Is it just me or is the space industry in a completely different reality than the rest of our technology sectors?
    I mean really though, think... the space shuttle was in the 80's, 20 years ago and we're still there!

    We need to get Gordon Moore in here to help figure out a quantitative method to determine just when I can vacation on Mars thank you very much.

  2. From the article by Mirk · · Score: 0, Troll
    ... Expected battery life to 2020 ...

    (Not supplied.) :-)

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  3. Re:Sending that record was a great idea by HanzoSan · · Score: 1, Troll

    Actually no I'd expect aliens to be much smarter than that lol.

    In 300 years? They could already know about it via technology we cant even comprehend and could be conquering us right now.

    They could just hiijack our DNA which we gave to them and come to earth as human, and then because of democracy and their superior intelligence take over the world through technology and politics.

    Hell they could destroy us just by coming here and giving us more technology than our governments could handle, like the internet and nano technology!

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  4. Re:I don�t see why its disappointing. by geronimo87 · · Score: 0, Troll

    If Carbon Dioxide is pollution, I demand that you immediately stop breathing.