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Voyager 1 Passes 100 AU from the Sun

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the they-don't-build-em-like-they-used-to dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday, Voyager 1 passed 100 astronomical units from the sun as it continues operating after nearly 30 years in space. That is about 15 billion kilometers or 9.3 billion miles as it travels about 1 million miles per day. Scientists still hope it will find the edge of the solar system and get into interstellar space."

3 of 326 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Voyager 1 by drinkypoo · · Score: -1, Troll
    If you are like me and love reading about Voyager 1 stuff, here's a great blog post with tons of linked info on the Golden Record, the philosophy behind the probe, who worked on it, that sort of thing.

    It is generally considered to be considerate, to say nothing of cluefulness, to actually provide a link when you have said "here's a link".

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  2. Star Trek linked to pedophilia? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    This has very little to do with your comment, but the L.A. Times recently published an article regarding the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit that focused on their fight against child pornography ("Sifting Clues to an Unsmiling Girl"). They are the law enforcement organization that photoshopped the victims out of child porn photos in order to get the public's assistance in identifying the backgrounds (it worked). In any case, the article had this amazing claim:

    On one wall is a "Star Trek" poster with investigators' faces substituted for the Starship Enterprise crew. But even that alludes to a dark fact of their work: All but one of the offenders they have arrested in the last four years was a hard-core Trekkie.

    Wow. All but one in four years. Seemed rather unlikely to me.

    So, I called the Child Exploitation Section of the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit and spoke to Det. Ian Lamond, who was familiar with the Times article. He claims they were misquoted, or if that figure was given it was done so jokingly. Of course, even if the figure was given jokingly, shouldn't the Times reporter have clarified something that seems rather odd? Shouldn't her editors have questioned her sources?

    Nevertheless, Det. Lamond does confirm that a majority of those arrested show "at least a passing interest in Star Trek, if not a strong interest." They've arrested well over one hundred people over the past four years and they can gauge this interest in Star Trek by the arrestees' "paraphenalia, books, videotapes and DVDs."

    Det. Constable Warren Bulmer slips on a Klingon sash and shield they confiscated in a recent raid. "It has something to do with a fantasy world where mutants and monsters have power and where the usual rules don't apply," Bulmer reflects. "But beyond that, I can't really explain it."

    I asked Det. Lamond if this wasn't simply a general interest in science fiction and fantasy, such as Star Wars or Harry Potter or similar. Paraphrasing his answer, he said, while there was sometimes other science fiction and fantasy paraphenalia, Star Trek was the most consistent and when he referred to a majority of the arrestees being Star Trek fans, it was Star Trek-specific.

  3. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    It's like the problem with fat chicks ... what a waste of an otherwise perfectly good set of female genitalia.

    Except in this case, it's:

    What a waste of an otherwise perfectly good unit of space in slashdot.org's database ...

    You my friend have failed to control your phallus.