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Voyager 1 Reaches Interstellar Space
letxa2000 writes "CNN is reporting that Voyager 1, now some 8.4 billion miles (90 AUs) from the sun, has left the solar system and entered interstellar space by reaching the heliopause. However, whether the probe has reached the heliopause or is just coming close is the subject of two papers to be published in Thursday's Nature Magazine. The probe supposedly has enough nuclear fuel to last until 2020. Will it be able to find anything interesting outside the solar system in the next 17 years?"
Do you guys have any idea how much RAM had to be added to the Matrix to extend the simulation out that far?!
Kevin Fox
Short answer: No.
Long Answer: "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space... " -DNA
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Wow I should only hope to make a piece of code that lasts so long (the best I did is 3), a true testament to what a bunch of nerds with some ingenuity (and money) can really do. These days it seems we have the genius, but surely not the money. Oh well...
:-)
Can only hope some day we catch up to Voyager. Either with a probe that could pass it up, or NCC-1701
...in bed
They've gone to plaid.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
we probably won't find anything too groundbreaking, but there's always new pictures and small findings that can lead to new theories and such that will be interesting to anybody who likes astronomy... for example, they recently found out that black holes create sound...
Heliopause
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The heliopause is the boundary where our Sun's solar wind is stopped by the interstellar medium.
The solar wind blows a "bubble" in the interstellar medium (the rareified hydrogen and helium gas that permeates the galaxy). The point where the solar wind's strength is no longer great enough to push back the interstellar medium is known as the heliopause, and is often considered to be the outer "border" of the solar system.
The distance to the heliopause is not precisely known. It is probably much smaller on the side of the solar system facing the orbital motion through the galaxy. It may also vary depending on the current velocity of the solar wind and the local density of the interstellar medium. It is known to lie far outside the orbit of Pluto. The current mission of the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft is to find and study the heliopause.
An alternative definition is that the heliopause is the magnetopause between the solar system's magnetosphere and the galaxy's plasma currents.
...it isn't going to reach the delta quadrant anytime soon?
Aliens too stupid to wipe off some space dirt to realize the dang thing isn't named VEEEGERRRR!
What is music when you despise all sound?
What's the range of communications for the probe? When will we lose our connection (if we haven't already)?
if it does find anything, how long before it's out of earshot for us? Are we able to hear from it up until that last bit of fuel is spent?
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
... does it run Linux?
Shouldn't it have read "...Voyager 1 has reached menopause?"
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
Voyager will meet a green man with pointed ears....
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
...every weekend when I use my bong. Far out man.
So Elvis has left the building
and Voyager 1 has left the solar system
-- TT
TT
Voyager 1 has reached heliopause and is now experiencing hot flashes and irritability. Hormone replacement therapy has proven innefective thus far.
What is this fuel used for? Just for communicating, or does it still need acceleration? If it's just for communication, couldn't they make it last longer by increasing the intervals between each time it communicates?
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
NASA's page on the heliosphere
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
I didn't read the article. What kind of fuel does thing use that will last until 2020?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
That's how long it takes a signal to reach us from the probe. When you consider the galaxy is 100,000 light years across, 8.4 billion miles is nothing.
Well, sooner or later V'ger runs into an alien species and gets sent back to earth, but the crew of the Enterprise will save us from destruction.
(I am not a mathmatician) so can someone please explain how long "now some 8.4 billion miles (90 AUs) from the sun" is in light years?
besides that we know it will one day come back remarkably misspelling its own name, while still having a excelent knowledge of the english language...
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
so that when V'ger comes back, we'll know what it is. I'm uncomfortable placing the fate of the Earth in the hands of James T. Kirk again.
There are over two million Americans who will go to sleep hungry tonight.
Why is it that we can brainwash the masses into thinking that it's okay for us to spend billions on space crap while ignoring the homeless people living in the streets and at the YMCA?
I'll never understand a society that says it's okay to blow billions on meaningless stuff in the name of science while ignoring all the social issues that plague us.
How many lean cuisines can you buy with the money we've spent on Voyager? How much beef jerky could you purchase with the billins we spend on the space shuttle?
Gah.
Wagner LLC Consulting Co. - Getting it right the first time
-A slightly higher concentration of some element on some piece of uninteresting rock that nobody cares about.
-A higher than expected concentration of radio signals coming from Earth containing desperate messages like "Hey aliens, come see us PLEASE!".
I'm looking forward to when we launch Voyager 412 in the year 3003. It will have an expected life of 4 thousand years and MIGHT make it to the next solar system where it will only take 8 years to communicate back how little was actually found.
Boring.
"Will it be able to find anything interesting outside the solar system in the next 17 years?"
Will it be able to tell us?
When life hands you lemons, grab the salt and pass the tequilla...
of how scientists do not take the next big leap. What frightens me the most is that we have not sent more probes after Voyager.
Coming up is a planetary alignment that would allow a route to Tau Ceti, one of the reasonably nearby stars that could have an inhabitable planet. Using modern high-velocity nuclear engines, a probe could be engineered to reach it in 100 years, roughly. And a craft could be engineered to actually survive the travel *and* send back useful data.
I want to see interstellar probes, engineered to travel to the nearest (12ly or less) stars and explore them.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Voyager will find the long lost Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Rumsfeld will use this as an excuse to overhaul the space program! We all know the Iraqis have had a secret space program since 1950.
90 AUs (Distance from the Sun to the Earth)
*
8 minutes (Time it takes light to reach Earth from the Sun)
=
720 Light Minutes
/
60
=
12 Light Hours.
We're quite a ways away from the Light Year.
Perhaps it will mate with an entity that will form a vast and intricate structure that will destroy everything in its path. ...I think I have an idea for a movie!
says: "Doh, Stupid comet!"
20 years from now, against all odds, the comet bashed ever so slightly by our irresponsibly launched space probe slams into Yellowstone super volcano.
That little probe has to be stopped before it bumps into something! Send someone out to get it before it's too late!
This is my sig.
I'm betting it'll drift around for a while, then be discovered by machines from the machine planet. Of course, we all know what happens after that.
You're comment is actually relevent, but there are folks who will TROLL/Flaim yoy just because you didn't mention the article.
I wonder if we'll ever see space technology advance enough so that, one day, we might be able to send a spacecraft past Voyager. Maybe we'll have some form of near-light-speed travel, or even faster-than-light travel, and manage to reach other stellar systems before Voyager does ?
In any case, I'll be more than satisfied if we establish a colony on Mars, tag me a conservative if you will, but I don't feel like leaving good old Sol just yet.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
You've got proof?
New Scientist
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
I'm not sure why I'm bothering to respond to this obvious troll, but here goes...
We already have enough resources to take care of all the needy people not only in this country but on this planet. The real problem is that society, as a whole, just doesn't care enough about the unfortunates enough to do anything. If we were to stop sending any money on space exploration, that money would not get immediately diverted to persons in need. It would most likely end up funding tax breaks so that people can buy a new SUV. Or maybe it would "disappear" in a S&L fraud or HUD "misappropriation".
I grow tired of hearing people complaining that we should divert money from science towards needed social programs. Those programs are underfunded because we just haven't made them a priority. Slashing someone else's budget isn't going to make that money magically appear in the budget of social programs. We would need a real fundamental change in attitudes of elected officials and the voting public.
GMD
watch this
Here's hoping that the only pre-requisite for other species to be allowed to engage in interstellar contact with yours is to build a probe that leaves your solar system. Gort shoudl be arriving anyday now to lay down the law.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
the homeless are mentally ill. The mentally ill in this country are considered to be third class citizens.
0.0014 light years.
That's sick, dude. That bald chick died, unfortunately, in 1998.
Scientists have long theorized that a shock wave exists where the hot solar wind bumps up against the thin gas of the interstellar medium.
Picard: To boldy go where no ma-, hang on Number 1, speed bump!
Will: All hands embrace for impact...
THUMP!
Picard: Data, inform engineering that we need better suspension on this thing...
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
when his disciples were anointing his turban with expensive olive oil and they wondered why they shouldn't spend that money on the poor, instead of turban oil, "the poor will always be with us."
I'm sure if you met most of those hungry, homeless sorts, you'd find them to be mentally ill people who refuse to take their medidine. Now, 30 years ago, they could be forced to take their medicine, but since those touchy feely sorts got into power, they said it's against human rights to force them to take medicine. So now, they prefer to remain undrugged and homeless. Their choice.
As far as YMCA dwellers, they're all gay, every one, I think the Village People proved that.
I think we need to dump more and more money into the space program, so we can make Mars colonies and only allows brainy guys and lots of girls with big tits and nice asses to emigrate, and leave the nutsos and homos back on Earth. Are you in?
Do you have a source? I can only hope it's true!!!
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act" - George Orwell
Would "we the people" ever hear about it? Or would the find be a classified secret due to so-called national/international security risks and issues?
It wouldn't matter whether it was classified or not. A secret that big would not stay a secret for long. There are leaks all the time. Christ, we've already managed to let the Chinese obtain detailed information about every nuclear weapon in our arsenal. I'm sure if we ever got a clear sign of extraterrestial intelligence, word would slip out in a matter of days. Some things are just way, way too important to expect that every single individual with access to that information would keep their trap shut.
GMD
watch this
You necrophiliac! She's dead
t'nera semordnilap
it's not whether or not Voyager finds something interesting... but whether something interesting finds *it*.
Dump the IRS - http://www.fairtax.org
I worked at JPL for the power group, so I can actually say something about this. All of the deep-space probes run on radiothermal generators. What this is basically a radioactive source surrounded by thermoelectric generators and alpha particle absorbers. Thus, both the thermal gradient established between the radioactive material and space (via heat pipes and radiators) and the alpha particles emitted by the radioactive material are able to generate power. There are two limitations on the lifetime of these generators - the lifetime of the radioactive isotope, and the durability of the thermoelectrics and alpha particle absorbers. I don't know too much about the particle absorbers, but I worked with the thermoelectrics, and there are durability runs of several years. However, Voyager is far older then any test we could ever do. My feeling in this is that barring high-heat conditions, the thermoelectrics should be able to last nearly indefinitely.
First Broadcast: "My god, it's full of stars!"
Maybe now we'll find out how accurate that Starfield Simulation screensaver really is!
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
She's dead, Jim.
I'm not crazy,I'm actively irresponsible.
Thinking about it, it's the first time a man-made artifact reaches the outside of the Oort cloud and effectively leaves the Solar System. This is an occasion on par with the launching of the Sputnik and the Moon landing.
July 2004 is closing in fast. Should be quite a time.
This is my sig.
the homeless are mentally ill. The mentally ill in this country are considered to be third class citizens.
that must be why prozac and zoloft are such mega-money-makers, right? because all those third class citizens have shitloads of money to spend on medicine.
fool.
From the band Warlord:
"Through Pioneer 10 and Voyager 1
We've launched our knowledge to other suns
Aspiring and reaching for the highest of beings
We've lost our search for the world's basic needs"
I hope it does find something, or something finds it. Earth could use some good news.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
... expensive.
The Voyager probes weren't built for speed. They were coasters, zipping from gravity well to gravity well with just a few puffs from the steering jets now and then.
If there were some pressing reason to catch up, we could do it, although it would be pricey due to the current high cost of getting things into orbit. You'd need to get something up there with a motor capable of adding substantial change in velocity. A big liquid fueled motor, or perhaps one of those new-fangled ion drives powered by a really big solar collector or a small reactor.
This is one of those problems that will get easier with time, assuming even modest progress in space propulsion. If we ever get practical fusion drives (theoretical of Isp topping 100,000 seconds!) we could get out there in a couple of years.
Stefan
Stefan
Last time I checked the speed of sound in space was essentially zero...
Why?
Read more...
'Go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes, aaarrrrrrrr!' -- Minsc
We must pay our fine at the nearest Galaxy office, which is housed in the Fine Collection section of the Hall of Records, located on Alpha Centauri's fourth world's second moon's third largest continent's second largest village.
...the right of the people to keep and arm bears shall not be infringed.
there is more than 1 you know ? our solar system is merely 1 of trillions
Sorry to have to inform you of this but
Persis Khambatta passed away in 1998.
Looks like you'll have to find yourself another future wife...
"A revolution without dancing is... a revolution not worth having"
Can only hope some day we catch up to Voyager. Either with a probe that could pass it up, or NCC-1701 :-)
We don't need to worry about catching up to Voyager. It comes back to Earth looking for it's creator sometime down the road in a gigantic pulsating cloud of energy.
Has anyone done any simulations/calculations about what path Voyager 1 (and 2, and the Pioneers, and so on) will take in future centuries? What stars it will encounter first? There seems to be scant info about this on the JPL site...
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
You posted as AC, wtf difference does it make if you get modded down?
she became a real bitch! Let's hope Voyager has a better time of it. Though I'll bet those hot flashes come in handy that far from the Sun.
So, a supersonic velocity means the space probe is moving faster than the mean speed of the errant hydrogen atoms.
Subsonic means it's moving slower than the mean speed of the atoms, and a wave can propagate ahead of it.
In this case, the velocity of the particles from the sun slows down when they encounter interstellar particles.
Why don't you send this lovely story to Art Bell? His email is artbell@mindspring.com
Or tell George Noory at coasttocoastam.com .
Voices heard through a fan or air conditioner are right up their alley.
AAHAHAHHAAHhahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
I have interest in both fusion and rockets. Would you share some pointers about these humongous-ISP fusion drives ?
Maybe we deserve this world ?
again.
more&more storIEs about almost nothing, &/or touting/shilling for payper liesense corepirate nazi ?pr? ?firm? scriptdead fairytail stock markup fraud execrable.
tell 'em robbIE? tell 'em about being soul DOWt? just so they know how it FEEls?
No, the real questions is... When the new-clear power supply runs out, does it switch from suck to blow??
Will it be able to find anything interesting outside the solar system in the next 17 years?
This begs the question: did it really find anything interesting inside of the solar system? Certainly not intelligent life....
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Source! I need a source! Please please please give me any sources you have! This would be so great if it were true
Only one year left 'till we get a chance to give up this experiment with pathologically homicidal cowboy oil barons and go back to putting crooked lawyers in charge of the United States.
from-JPL.NASA "The solar system does not end at the orbit of Pluto, the ninth planet. Nor does it end at the heliopause boundary, where the solar wind can no longer continue to expand outward against the interstellar wind. It extends over a thousand times farther out where a swarm of small cometary nuclei, termed Oort's Cloud, is barely held in orbit by the Sun's gravity, feeble at such a great distance. Voyager 1 passed above the orbit of Pluto in May 1988, and Voyager 2 will pass beneath Pluto's orbit in august 1990. But even at speeds of over 35,000 mph, it will take nearly 20,000 years for the Voyagers to reach the middle of the comet swarm, and possibly twice this long for them to pass the outer boundaries of cometary space. By this time, they will have traveled a distance of two light-years, equivalent to half of the distance to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star. "
Voyager crash lands on this deep and remote planet..as each of its systems start to shutdown in turn, its external microphones pick up the voice of Charleston Heston, screaming in the distance "Take your paws off me you damn dirty ape!"....
;-)
[muffled horse hooves pounding on the ground]
Voyager 1 signing off. Goodbye earth...
hmm.. cometary nuclei. Interesting.
I have heard arguments that it would be dangerous to jettison spent nuclear fuel into space, because an accident on the way up would spread nuclear waste over a wide area of earth.
Now that only begs the question of if it's dangerous to send a nuclear engine into space. How risky is such a thing?
I don't know much about the subject at all, so excuse me if this sounds like ignorance.
prozac and zoloft aren't for the mentally ill... they're for the average person who finds it more socially acceptable to take them then medicate with pot, alcohol, xtc, or another drug.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
The effectivness of this troll is admirable. +3, Troll is in order! Just believable enough to hook the gullible, and tempting enough to cause rampages in /.'s search for news regarding Sim's departure. Bravo, I say...bravo.
I only wish Carl Sagan was alive to see his baby leave our little corner of the galaxy.
R.I.P. Carl Sagan
hey're for the average person who finds it more socially acceptable to take them then medicate with pot, alcohol, xtc, or another drug
What makes you think they're not mentally ill? If you need to medicate yourself at all with anything, then you are ill.
No stories have been posted by michael for many many days now. Either he's lazy, or he's on vacation, or he's been fired.
For those interested in scientific accuracy, there is a little bit of misinformation in the statement:
What scientists are speculating is that Voyager 1 has reached termination shock, which is the where the solar wind first meets interstellar plasma.
Heliopause is the outer boundary of the solar wind. This Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) from June 24, 2002 provides a nice graphically illustrated explanation of Heliopause and Terminal Shock.
It will take a number of years more for Voyager 1 to reach heliopause. Voyager 1 is currently about 90 AUs away. Heliopause is speculated to exist at 110 to 150 AUs.
Voyager has been moving through space in ways unexplainable by physics. There is a small acceleration that can't be accounted for using known laws. It's almost like gravity doesn't work quite the way we think it does.
Of course, there is always the possibility that we just can't see the source of the acceleration, and it'll turn out to be something simple. However so far, all proposals put forth to explain it have been shown to be incorrect.
I'd do a bit of computation on the shape of voyager interpreted as a solar sail, along with how any magnetic field it may have interacts with the solar wind, before worrying about whether to tweak the models of gravity.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
to build a new set of probes, take the Deep Space One platform and build six.
One for each cardinal direction. And keep going.
Also anyone heard anything about the probe design involving basically using a solenoid to create a magnetic field around the craft and creating/capturing plasma as reaction mass. I have been googling for over 10 min and can't find what I was looking for. Also tried searching nasa.gov (a dead loss).
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
Well, if it can travel for 17 years, it is certain it will leave the solar system sooner or later, the point is only when.
The chances of having an accident where the craft's plutonium fuel kills lots of people are next to nil. It's a distribution problem. You've got to get it into people's bodies.
Yes the plutonium on the craft is toxic, but you yourself (should you be a typical fertile male) produce enough sperm to impregnate every woman on the planet. Are there protesters outside your door demanding the dismantling of, uh, your missle?
as that post was interesting enough to start some discussion
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
The P238 will decay away to U234 which will decay away into lead (Pb) after many tens of thousands of years, ultimately becoming inert.
National Park Service Entrance Signs
Why not just simply dump them into an active volcano?
Better written as:
I was only wrong once, when I thought I'd made a mistake but I hadn't.
"What makes you think they're not mentally ill? If you need to medicate yourself at all with anything, then you are ill."
well i would say at least 50% of the world drinks on occasion or more.. put that in with the other drugs (i know some people who dont drink but smoke blunt after blunt) and you have most of the population of earth being "ill". by that rationelle(sp?), you could say most of the world is infected with the skin pigmant virus and only albinos are not ill. its the same exact reasoning your using.
besides ive never met more mentally fucked up people than people who are strait edge. usually they compensate it with denial of the fun that they are missing or some philiosophy like christianity, which in a way, is a sort of medication.
I learned about these via a collection of papers I read at Carnegie Mellon University. Damned if I remember the title.
But if you google for these phrases, you'll find a lot:
"inertial confinement fusion" propulsion
"magnetic confinement fusion" propulsion
"Good thing they have several years"
Would allow us to decide A) whenever we pleased, probably. However, I suppose we do just have a couple years for B).
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Hm lets see a probe explores the solar system completing numerous diverse missions, travels though space for 26 years dodging planets and bits of rock and still provides useful data. Voting machine whos sole purpose is to count the number of times people press buttons, lasts 5 minutes in an airconditioned room and even then provides no useful data.
The only thing that would come close to explaining it would be that NASA had 50 Billion times more money for their project, do i see bad budgeting by the government?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Well, it varies based on temperature and pressure, of course, but when you're talking about an article written for most everybody who isn't a scientist to read, 'sonic' is referring to the normal speed of sound we're accustomed to, approximately 343 m/s. There is no implication here that there is sound propagating effectively through the heliopause. Nobody's trying to pull the wool over your eyes. 'Sonic' is just a common reference point when talking about velocities.
YIAAP (Yes, I Am A Physicist)
I'm sure that prozac and zoloft do help a few people who are mentally ill. But I refuse to believe that 10 million americans are actually truly mentally ill. Quite a few just need a fix.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Homelessness and poverty will always exist under captialism. I am not saying that this is good or bad, I am saying that we do not live in the Star Trek utopian society in which there are jobs that pay enough for people to survive available for everyone.
You might be able to teach someone to fish, but the but at some point the economy may not have any need for more fishermen (or whatever other job skill). All the unempolyed coders reading this can attest to this.
How does the current standard of using solar power compare to the nuclear power used on Voyager? I know that most satelites using solar are staying close to earth so there's plenty of sun, but would they work at the distances we're talking about? If we wanted to send another long range probe, would it need something other than solar for power? Would that something be nuclear?
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
How many Libraries of Congress away is that?
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
now watch this go to -1 as some giant beast who can't do a situp to save his life flexes his mighty moderation muscle - the only muscle he has.
That's 12.52 light hours.... or to put it in Internet terms:
a 9.0e8 ms ping time.
Not a good place to put a quake server.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Will it be able to find anything interesting outside the solar system in the next 17 years? I sure hope so, though most likely not.
Nothing strange about that small accelleration - space sucks...
Simple concept, drop a nuclear bomb behind a craft, and ride the shock wave forward. Needs a pushing plate, shock absorbers, etc of a good magnitude, but the system can and does work.
Great idea. We'll build it, you get in the ship, and then after we detonate the bomb we'll design an atomic spatula to remove you from the rear end of the space ship.
Without manipulation of gravity, the fastest humans can possibly accelerate is a few times the acceleration of Earth's gravity. And to get to decent speeds with that kind of acceleration takes a very long sustained force. You would need a giant spring lightyears long which could somehow magically not shred itself or melt under the kind of stress you're describing. You'd have better luck designing the spatula.
Space neither sucks or blows; there's only differences in pressure.
If space doesn't blow then I have no reason to go.
BUSTA RYMES yo!
anorexic, and have no mod points, you insensitive clod!!
A few years ago a youngish lady approached me on the street asking if I could give her some money so she could get a prescription filled as she couldn't afford it.
I just assumed that she was being truthful, though later I had my doubts when I saw her talking to another person while still holding the script.
Thinking about it - I should have gone with her to the pharmacy and paid to get the prescription filled - that way I know that the money was getting used to do what she asked for.
I think the real question is... how long until William Shatner finds it approaching earth again, surrounded by this giant cloud of gas that sounds like an untuned electric guitar?
Borgs can be HOT! Ooooooooo....gimme that robotic vagina!
SEVEN OF NINE (BENDING OVER): We are Robo-B00ty! Resistance is futile. We will be fudge-packed by YOU.
(Unreleased outtake from Rick Berman's private unproduced Voyager Episode "Borgasm.")
What I'm really interested in finding out is: now that we have something that's reached or passed the heliopause, will the mysterious deceleration our probes have encountered cease?
No one has any idea what is causing the slow-down. Dark matter? Interstellar anti-gravity? Who knows? It's...mysteeerious! Maybe it has something to do with the heliopause.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
Working at NASA a few years ago I saw an old painting of voyager's path through space over the next several million years. In that time it will pass close (relatively speaking) to more than a half a dozen stars. For a moment I was taken into this artist's imagination, and saw the vision of humanity setting out on a voyage far beyond all previous scope of space and time. I returned this year to where the painting had been and it was gone. Speaks a lot for the problems facing NASA from inside and out.
I'd suggest you learn a bit about anti-depressants before voicing your ignorance to the world. You cannot get a fix from them. In fact, they do absolutely nothing to people with normal seratonin levels. Maybe the fact that 10 million Americans are on them is an indication that society as a whole has become a cesspool, and there are still a few people left who actually care.
Tis a shame I'll be old and grey by the time we actually find out. With the length of time the signal would take to arrive...
It's only a guess, since I'm not very good at math (and don't know the transmission speeds)...
24 -- Current age
17 -- Years till the signal arrives?
41 -- Yup, old and grey. Thanks, Mom...
~Kyrthira Phelan~
But if the RIAA/MPAA had their way they would be required to have a CD/DVD player that could only play disks from solar system reigon 1..
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Never trust the mainstream media to get a science story right!
r .html
Voyager 1 *might* have reached the Termination Shock--NOT the heliopause. The termination shock is where the solar wind--electrically charged (ionized) hydrogen atoms blown off the surface of the sun--slows from 700,000-1.5 million miles per hour, down to under 250,000 mph. This indicates it's getting nearer to interstellar space because the solar wind is getting weaker, and it's having more trouble pushing against the interstellar winds of the galaxy. The termination shock lies somewhere between 80 and 100 AU. Between the termination shock and the heliopause (the true edge of the solar system), is the "heliosheath" region--kind of the Siberia of our solar system (distant, cold, dark). The heliopause lies around 120-150 AU.
In effect, Voyager 1 may have reached the outtermost region of our solar system (which no craft has ever done before), but it still has 10-20 years to go to reach interstellar space. Here's NASA's press release. Note they say Voyager is about to reach the solar system's final frontier--not the edge of the solar system:
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/1105voyage
isnt that quote a little dated?
Shouldnt voyager 2 have reached pluto 13 years ago?
For instance, what quality is the porno out there and can we get close enough to make it R rated?
Doubt it.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
It's even worse than driving to El Paso after dark, and there's nothing out there.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
Freeman Dyson worked on the project, called "Project Orion", in the 1950's. His son wrote a book on the subject. One of the major problems with the damping was the springs getting out of control if one of the bombs was a dud...
Modern designers have looked at alternative approaches for damping the shock, like using a more sail-like structure at a much greater distance from the bomb detonation. Most of them seem convinced it can be made to work. The biggest problem is the radioactive fallout, which will likely preclude their use as a way to lift off from Earth.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Inpatient treatment for alcoholics costs a good $20,000, only $12,000 of which is paid by insurance. It's estimated that 10% of the North American populace is alcoholic, though most aren't far gone at any moment. Do you have $30 billion to treat them all? And indeed, far more, because currently only a few are treated, and facilities are limited. To treat them all, we'd have to build vastly more.
STDs, diabetes, cancer... these are all things you have to deal with once the starving people aren't dying. Once they're healthy and thriving, new things like heart disease and anorexia start to be major problems.
Charity is a never-ending well. The world doesn't have the resources to fix all the problems, no matter how many studies say we can cure world hunger, because world hunger is just a dam on the river of woes that mankind can suffer. If the world can't solve them, no man can. Not even Bill Gates, with his measly $40 billion.
So try this old maxim, admittedly a bit tarnished from use by the Soviets: "Take according to need, give according to ability." If your ability is sending up rockets, fine. If your ability is healing the sores of lepers, great! The world will lurch forward and evolve on it's own. It's far too big for you to about-face.
And anyway, the most useful things in moving man forward in the past have been what others have considered a waste, like art, literature, and philosophy. Newton saved more lives being a self-absorbed man, in the long run, than ever Mother Teresa did.
Damn straight. We should bomb those filthy terrorist-hiding moon-rock loving Clangers back the stone age!
Why not supply a link to the JPL voyager page , it has much more info.
Voyagers 1/2 have to be the most most productive space missions ever - so much of what we know about the outer planets/moons (volcanos on Io, oceans on Europa, storms on Neptune) came from Voyager first..
But Voyager was not primarily designed as an interstellar probe, and will probably run out of steam around 2020, so JPL are proposing various possible new missions - one is a solar sail based Interstellar probe which will travel around 200 AU in 15 years - much faster than Voyager. Because of its speed (14 AU/year) it could be doing science at 400 AU and beyond.. Its instruments will be far more powerful (and smaller) than Voyagers, probably including a modern CCD telescope to look at Kupier belt objects.
I say make a few of these and let them rip..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
I have not done much research on this so I am asking this question here, please do not flame me for my ignorance. Has it been theorized that their may or may not be in existence some sort of interstellar currents? By asking this, I am making reference to the types of underwater currents that we find in the ocean on Earth.
So what about this possible existence of a system interstellar currents that run between the solar systems? Has it been shot down as negative, ruled as possible or not even considered?
"Help me Obi-/.-Kenobi,your my only hope!" -$
...that maybe he was bullshitting you? Or that he was psychotic and believed that he was making 45K per year, dating Natalie Portman and had a hugh penis too. Geez, what some people will believe...
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
Maybe there is something 'pushing' on Voyager now that it is outside Sol's gravity well. Einstein called the cosmological constant the greatest mistake of his career, and since then few physicists have dared to examine the idea. Funny if he turned out to be right after all.
It is outside of the innermost part where the planets are, but has not come anywhere near the Oort cloud, where most of the comets are.