Slashdot Mirror
Remembering Pioneer 10
Daniel Goldman writes "Twenty one years ago today, Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to leave our solar system, by crossing the orbit of Neptune (which was then the farthest planet from the Sun). Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to enter the asteroid belt, the ring of giant rocks beyond Mars. It survived and zoomed on to Jupiter in late 1973, where it became the first spacecraft to take close-up photographs of the storms on the giant planet's surface. After Jupiter, it kept going, collecting data on the particles and radiation it encountered. More info about Pioneer 10 at Wikipedia."
Because the last time we did this story it was 20 years ago today.
Happy New Pioneer 10 Year everybody. Whoooooooooo!
KFG
...when it returns as V'Ger. ;)
Find out about the Lexus Rx400h Hybrid!
which was then the farthest planet from the Sun
/nit picky bastard
Yeah, I hate the way they keep adding new planets. Oh, you meant farthest known...
We'll soon be dealing with an unstoppable force known as P'Eer!
Everyone knows that pioneer 10 was destroyed by Klingons in some harmless target practice!
That's a very academic question, and although I could launch a debate about what counts as a planet and whether the Oort Cloud is properly part of the Solar System, it all comes down to the very non-scientific and uninteresting issue of definition. The point is this: Pioneer is really, really, really far. Even farther than Canada.
I can't ever imagine what a super-intelligent race could do with it.
I think it would make a dandy TV tray.
KFG
Lies! The odds of successfully navigating an astroid field are 3720 to 1!
Finkployd
Contrary to nearly every science fiction chase scene, the asteroid belt in orbit around our star is hardly what anyone would call dense. It "survived"? Heck, it'd have to try pretty hard to hit a rock out there!
Man, that makes me think how "Space C.O.P.S" is going to be such an awesome show in 50 years. Some hick gets drunk and wrecks his cruiser after he runs into an asteroid:
I....I shweaa ofisher, dat f*cking asteroid comes from nowheers and plaws int....into ma spashe truck.
Have you been drinking rocket fuel today son?
Jusht a few spache beers, nutin' I cant....
*Space pukes
Ok, this is the most pointless post ever, I'm going to watch the Jetsons.
I don't mean to sound dirty in such a respectable forum, but I couldn't help but notice that the Pioneer plaque has much more attention given to the male genitalia than the female genitalia?
Probably would've been a bush considering the period. Maybe none of the NASA plaque designers were good at curly hair.
... just imagine an extraterrestrial life finally reading this plaque. I can't ever imagine what a super-intelligent race could do with it.
I can. They'd finally be able to figure out where the source of all that free porn spam is located!
You're using her as bait, Master!
Even after the many mishaps (>$40 mil lost) due to the use of nonmetric measures, NASA still includes the nonmetric measures (miles and mph) in their descriptions. That is stupid.
s /p ioneer/PNStat.html
http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Project
Pioneer 10 is not really dead, it is just so far away we can no longer hear it.
And so... old probes don't die. They just fade away.
Haven't you read any Vernor Vinge? Pioneer was simply reaching the edge of the slow zone and will soon achieve sentiency.
Of course, the physicists will never guess that it's really the gravitational effects of huge surveying ships taking measurements for a hyperspatial express route . . .
>>We've certianly come a long way in ~30 years from grainy washed out Pioneer photopolarimeter images to super high resolution ultrasharp CCD images from Cassini.
Hey, there's no stars in those pictures. They must have been taken in a studio out in the Nevada desert. It's a government coverup, I tell ya...
wbs.
Huh?
The anomoly is caused by theta band radiation influencing the velocity of omicron particles in a subspace domain.
Reversing the polarity of the plasma injectors should alleviate the problem.
The woman of the Pioneer 10 plaque (check the Wikipedia link) has no genitals.
Alien biologists will have a hard time figuring out how human reproduction works.
Then when the aliens eventually realize that the genitals were omited for the woman (but not for the man) alien sociogists and psychologists will have even harder time explaining why we did this.
So in fact the farthest planet from the Sun HAS CHANGED in the last 21 years.
Why this is the case is left as an excercise for the reader...
OOOOHH! Oh! I know this one.
For those who didn't pay attention in school, it's all related to pollution. See, all this global warming is making our atmosphere less dense (since hot gases expand, and believe me I know all about hot gases.) Since it's less dense, the amount of "gravity waves" released from out planed are less dense, too. The lower gravity affect Pluto, letting it slip further away from Earth than Neptune. So Pluto became the furthest planet back in '99 or so.
You may be asking why Pluto went farther away, but Neptune did not. That has to do with global temperature, too. Pluto is colder, so it's more dense, and relies more on the extra gravity from Earth than Neptune.
Now you know, and you're ready to pass that junior high science final you've been putting off all this time.
Go get 'em, Tiger!
± 29 dB
This is modded insightfull and informative??? Thats waaay more funny than the original joke. The moderators really are on drugs today...
Or perhaps they know something we don't . . . do you know where your towel is?
No AI can be considered sufficiently advanced enough until it can experience boredom.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell.