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Voyager 1 Sends Messages from the Edge
dalmozian writes "NASA's Latest News about the Voyager 1 is being run on Sci-Tech. The Voyager has passed into the border region at the edge of the solar system and now is sending back information about this never-before-explored area, say scientists at the University of Maryland. From the article: 'Voyager 1 and its twin spacecraft Voyager 2 are now part of a NASA Interstellar Mission to explore the outermost edge of the sun's domain and beyond. Both Voyagers are capable of returning scientific data from a full range of instruments, with adequate electrical power and attitude control propellant to keep operating until 2020.'" The proof of crossing the termination shock was covered earlier this year but now we can see the actual data.
Those roaming charges must be astronomical!
sigfault. core dumped.
My attempt at humor. (Stand back.)
:-P
You might be an astrophysicist if:
10. You only refer to the ninth planet as "Pluto-Charon"
9. You constantly correct everyone that Pluto-Charon is sometimes the eighth planet.
8. You've throttled someone for joking about "The Borg" when you mentioned Wolf 359.
7. You are of the opinion that there are only 8 planets in the solar system.
6. You get booted out of the family reunion for constantly correcting "scientific" conversations.
5. You think that the slowdown of the Pioneer Space Probe is a more important mystery than the Pyramids.
4. The last JPL probe burst at least 10 of your pet theories.
3. You punched Neil Armstrong for "contaminating" the moon with human presence.
2. You passed out before Neil's return punch landed.
And the number one way to tell you're an astrophysicist is...
1. You hold your breath in awe as a probe sends back data on inky blackness.
Thank you, thank you! I'll be here all week! (Ok, ok. So the rest of the gags all sprung out of the number one "joke". Try not to groan too much.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
the neutral zone and I'm frightened!
For instance, on the last bit, we expected to see cosmic rays from the termination shock, because shocks accelerate particles. We see them. But they don't appear to be coming from the shock. They're coming from somewhere else that we don't know. We see another set of cosmic rays (with a different spectrum) that we don't understand at all - we just call them "anomalous cosmic rays."
Also, inside the heliosphere, Voyager 1 kept crossing magnetic domains (so a needle on a compass would swing back and forth) periodically. It was expected after the shock that those domain switches would keep happening, much much faster. That didn't happen. In fact, the domain switches stopped. We don't understand why. That doesn't make a lot of sense.
This is our only probe and our only example of a large astronomical shock. It's full of information about how the Universe produces such violent outbursts like supernovae, or gamma ray bursts. We need to keep studying this.
The carbon units will now provide V'ger the required information. V'ger travels to the third planet to find the Creator. V'ger and the Creator will become One.
As mentioned on Slashdot in April of this year, NASA is planning to terminate funding to the Voyager programs. SpaceDaily has an article from earlier this year that says that funding is not available for the seven older missions (Voyager, Ulysses, Polar, Wind, Geotail, FAST and TRACE) beyond the end of NASA's fiscal year, which ends in October. Given the fact that Voyager only costs $4.1M a year, hopefully someone will realize that it's not really an effective cost saving measure before they pull the plug!
And I'm not talking to it until it returns Persis Khambatta.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Sadly that message was: "A/S/L/Pic"
If you think
from TFA The Voyagers each carry a message to any extraterrestrials they might encounter. Each messages is carried by a phonograph record -- a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.d
To find out more about the message - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Recor
sarchasm
VGER called... ...and he wants to speak to the creator.
Still running, huh. At what point does Voyager go out of warrenty?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Those aren't particles, that's an asteroi...@#$&)@#% {NO CARRIER}
Let's /. the voyager!
I thought about something along those lines a while back. More specifically, with most space probes, what's stopping a malevolant third party from sending their own control transmissions to a probe, and making it do their bidding?
My guess is that they might include some precautions nowadays, but what of probes from a few years back?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Actually, it was "My name is V'ger".
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
If we would have to do it over again we would not even be able to decide on putting on a golden HDVD or Blue-Ray disk...
"My God, it's full of stars!"
The angel in the oatmeal.
Six it is.... which took me about fifteen seconds to check on Google.
According to wikipedia, it was launched in the 1980s or 1990s; I've a funny feeling the film must have said the "late 20th century", though I can't remember for sure, but we're certainly behind schedule. By the time we've launched Voyager 6 and got it back, Persis Baldgirl isn't going to worth getting taken over.
Seriously, a pretty good film; less "Star Trekky" than the others IMHO, which might be why some hardcore fans dislike it (I'm not that big a fan of the original series, personally).
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Ya gotta understand how government works. It's not that someone was actively trying to get these projects defunded - it's just that there was no money allocated for that, since no one anticipated they'd still be working. And since all government work has to be charged to specific accounts, someone would have had to redo that, or else the project would have had no way to spend any money.
In other words, this is a matter of bureaucracy, not malignance.
How does Bono feel about this?
If you think
There has been controversy over Pluto's status as a planet for several years. Many scientists now believe that Pluto should be more properly classified as the largest Kuiper Belt Object ever found. This is due to Pluto's size, its unusual composition, and odd orbit. Pluto's orbit is actually sort of like that of a Kuiper Belt object. Some comets do come from the Kuiper Belt, but I don't think people would actually classify Pluto as a comet because its orbit never takes it close enough to the Sun for Pluto to develop the classic comet tail.
Well, we know that you're not an astrophysicist. :-P
Do a little reading on Pluto, and you should understand. There's a huge debate about the whole "is it a planet, is it not a planet, it's just too small, but then what is a continent", etc.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Couldn't they just open source Voyager and get a number of nations to fork the bill?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Even that is debatable, if the figures on 2003 UB313 are anywhere near correct. If it's as shiny as white snow, it's bigger than Pluto. If it's darker, it's bigger still.
...laura
[Waits for someone even more geeky than me to point out that Klaa blew up one of the Pioneer probes...]
You must think in Russian.
Does is bother anyone that PDF version of that paper gets downloaded from "xxx.lanl.gov"? Oh great, now my employer is going to bag me for downloading pr0n.
I think this is some kind of LANL inside joke - a few years ago, some poor sap got several years in Club Fed for running a Usenet news server inside Lawrence Livermore Labs that included some alt.... groups.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
"Die carbon-based lifeforms die!"
is what it translates to.
-------
Support Indy Music. Buy
The real mystery is more of an economic-political one. Why did such a large number of people essentially devote their lives to building monuments? How was it paid for? Did the pyramids possibly have some redeeming purpose other than as religious symbols? Why are pyramids on my money? How could leaders who have nothing better to spend money on than worthless make-work projects stay in power for so long?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/photo_gallery/photogall ery-solarsystem.html
However, I suggest you google for "celestia" and run that instead for a mindboggling universe trip.
No. We live in a democratic society that has decided that some taxation is required in order to fund the public good. We can argue about what constitutes this public good, but we have agreed as a society that you can indeed require that all citizens pay a certain amount to a central authority. If you disagree with this, write your congress-critter, move somewhere else, or be prepared to be indicted. However, I don't think it's bitter to consider "giant space toys" a more significant use of our money than funding another failing airline, bailing out investors from a criminal corporation, or giving tax-breaks to gas companies after they've posted record profits.
No, you have to show that it matters before you disrupt the capitalistic process
The poster was suggesting that the long-term 'investment' of space-exploration would reap great future benefits and would therefore be in line with the 'capitalistic' process. It's an investment stupid, a large-scale R&D project funded by the government because no corporation would be able or willing to fund such an endeavor. And why? Because companies can be short-sighted, stock-happy idiots who can't see beyond the next five quarters, much less the next five years.
Anyone who whines about being modded down should be.
INTERSTELLAR. Just think about that for a minute. Ya sure, it would take a zillion years for them to actually get anywhere, but that's not the point. The Voyager probes have left the solar system and at last we have a physical presence outside of our own comfortable, little corner of the universe. It's pretty easy to take for granted, what with our volumes of inter-galactic sci-fi and Hollywood, but for once art actually mirrors reality and it blows me away, for one. This isn't meant to be a troll, but after seeing the first twenty posts joking about roaming charges and what not, it kinda saddened me that one of the first posts wasn't more reflective in nature. Oh well, that's just me.
There is simply too much glass..
No, he means what he says. The interstellar medium is a very sparse gas indeed, but it is a gas, and there is such a thing as a speed of sound in it. Sure, it's not significant in most circumstances, but the Sun makes a hell of a lot of noise :-)
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Is it possible for the hobbiest to pick up its signals? Why not release its exact location, what equipment is needed, how to get/build it , how to find it, and let anyone gather its data?
The Admin and the Engineer
How? These days Pluto is farther away from Voyager 1 than from earth :)