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Voyager 2 Speaking In Tongues
dangle sends in an update from the borderland of Sol. "Voyager 2's flight data system, which formats information before beaming it back to Earth, has experienced a hiccup that has altered the pattern in which it sends updates home, preventing mission managers from decoding the science data beamed to Earth from Voyager 2. The spacecraft, which is currently 8.6 billion miles (13.8 billion km) from Earth, is apparently still in overall good health, according to the latest engineering data received on May 1. 'Voyager 2's initial mission was a four-year journey to Saturn, but it is still returning data 33 years later,' said Voyager project scientist Ed Stone of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. 'It has already given us remarkable views of Uranus and Neptune, planets we had never seen close-up before. We will know soon what it will take for it to continue its epic journey of discovery.' The space probe and its twin Voyager 1 are flying through the bubble-like heliosphere, created by the sun, which surrounds our solar system."
I think I can make it out. It says "All... your... base..."
Oh no, it's hit the crystal sphere!
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Don't piss it off, NASA.
Arnold Rimmer: Aliens!
Twinstiq, game news
I thought it was Voyager VI that was supposed to come back and we couldn't understand what it was saying...
"It has already given us remarkable views of Uranus..."
Well, I never!
Either the probe has been out there long enough to become sentient or this is an elaborate trap set by aliens. Either way, our doom is imminent.
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
It has already given us remarkable views of Uranus
Teehee. I could never be an astronomer.
*insert oblig goatse reference here*
which is totally what she said
Talk about return on investment!
"Send... more... paramedics."
33 years old = bit rot and other SS parts going bad??
Battery getting weak?
Some kind of y2k error?
Rollover error?
All the news articles report pretty much the same, digested, not particularly informative stuff. The mission page hasn't been updated in a while, the NASA news item isn't any more detailed, and the last operations report was from March 12. But I did learn this from the operations report: they're running the whole mission on less than 275 Watts of power from the RTG units. Wow.
I wonder if it'd be possible to reconstruct the signal. We know what the signal is supposed to look like, and should be able to find out what's different.
"It has already given us remarkable views of Uranus and Neptune, planets we had never seen close-up before."
And, sadly, we haven't been back since. I can't quite bring myself to call this a travesty, but it does seem like a wasted chance to explore some still-mysterious planets. (Granted, it's expensive to send orbiters out there.)
They invented a translator unfortunately it only translates into an incomparable dead language. Hello (Speaks into the translator) Bonjour (Translator Replies) see bloody gibberish.
D.J.: I thought it said "liberate me" - "save me." But it's not "me." It's "liberate tutame" - "save yourself." And it gets worse.
[Plays the distress signal again]
D.J.: There - I think that says "ex inferis." "Save yourself... from hell." Look, if what Doctor Weir tells us is true, this ship has been beyond the boundaries of our universe, of known scientific reality. Who knows where it's been, what it's seen. Or what it's brought back with it.
Miller: From hell.
After the collision they repaired each other. That is where the confusion came from.
Fight Spammers!
I have no idea what I'm talking about here, but...
We now have much better technology, both for getting to space, and for science aboard a probe. For example, even something like the British Beagle 2 Mars mission cost a few million to make, and although it didn't end up returning much of use, it demonstrates how 'easy' such things are (or how hard things are, depending on your point of view, I suppose).
So I'm wondering, isn't it worth mankind's time to build a (say) £25M long-range probe, like the Voyagers, only designed for the purpose, and shoved into space in some get-there-fast manner?
I'm sure we can argue about the best use of a limited budget, and what constitutes the best science returned for the spend, for the rest of our lives, but a "cheap" probe sent out every few years to do something a bit random might well do wonders for us and our understanding of the Solar system, let alone the Universe as a whole. I wouldn't presume to say we should do such things at the expense of anything more major, but more to foster some 'experimentation' in space.
Just a thought... TFI Friday :-)
Just go to Goatse.
(Yes, oldjoke is old.)
33 years and still sending back signals!? Remarkable!
Don't you wish they made everything to work past 33 years?
it has been bombarded by gamma radiation for so long that it has mutated into a self aware being. i predict that in 150 years or so, the mechs will invade and drive us toward the center of the galaxy.
That's what FBC was all about. The problem is that even at a piddly $10M, that's enough money that nobody wants to see a failure, so the grand scheme of launch 10 to have 5 work faces huge political problems, when the #2 unit in the sequence fails.
BTW, just the launch costs for interplanetary missions probably start around $50-100M. It takes a lot of energy to fling something toward the stars out of Earth's gravity well.
NASA did the SIIHPAPP?
Perhaps the data has been altered by intelligent beings in order to communicate with us.
Or maybe they did it as a joke.
They're using their grammar skills there.
is not how tongues works. If the satellite really was broadcasting in tongues then everyone on the planet would be able to understand the transmissions.
Just include some of the data in a game DRM key, and it will be cracked in a few hours. Problem solved.
Or announce a contest. Most anything as a prize, maybe a spacesuit glove or spare antenna? We crack encryption readily in many cases, so I suspect someone can figure out what rolled over or got zapped by a cosmic ray, and this is fixed for another 33 years or so.
-ps: is Voyager 2 running better than a 1977 Cadillac? Probably. Probably better than a 1977 Mercedes.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Maybe a stupid question, but now that Voyager 2 has passed the heliosphere itself, isn't it entering the heliopause sight-unseen? Since this is really an unknown area of space, aren't there many new dangers there? My mind is drawn especially to things like foreign solar winds and forms of radiation that the probe wouldn't have dealt with inside the protective heliosphere.
Does this seem at all likely? I wonder if there is any data on this, or more importantly if any of the results leading up to the probe's failure might indicate extra-solar forces at work...
because it is getting closer to God?
Being that I am not a physicist (though I am a big fan), I am asking any physicists out there if they have figured out how much time has passed for the Voyager satellites according to the laws of relativity compared to Earth. From what I understand, they are traveling around 17km/s. How does that work out over a span of 30-50 years from earthling perspective.
Thanx in advance.
20th century Marxism is not progress...
Ack! Ack! Ack!
Translated to:
Don't run! We are your friends!
We come in peace! We come in peace!
"... it's full of stars"
... I'll have a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster with a side of Plutonium Nyborg
Hijacked by alien pirates. Now transmitting ransom demands.
I'd have thought a cosmic ray flipped an important bit.
and we, still in the Slow Zone, can't understand it. But what gave it the upgrade?
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Wasn't this posted yesterday?
Anyway it would be sad if the thing broke down, considering how far out there it's getting.
Imagine if you were still using version 1.0 of their hardware and softwares.
Will Voyager 2 be able to keep up with its Twitter account? http://twitter.com/Voyager2
WTF is a "data pattern change"?
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Since Voyager isn't as close to a large gravitational field like the Earth, isn't its frame of reference in time different? It's been 33 years for us, but maybe its only been a few years for it?
AM I Fucking TH3RE YeT???
"It's science, Jim, but not as we know it."
Stachel
Love bug virus?
Obviously it's simply passed through the major portion of the heliosphere, and the signal is simply being distorted. Like looking through a glass full of water.
Alternately it finally reached the edge of Job's reality distortion field, and we're just now getting the real data in.
And V'GER is a bit like a short bus?
Signal Fade Away
Voyager still on its way
with Vogon Haiku
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
Well, we all know that even simple machinery can become self aware when going far enough into the beyond...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
The short answer is no, Voyager's frame isn't different enough to the Earth's for that huge a time dilation to have occurred purely because of that.
The long answer requires recourse to general relativity, which I'm far too tired for I'm afraid.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
The space industry today reminds me a great deal of the early automobile industry. When the auto industry was in its infancy each vehicle was essentially a custom designed and hand built object. The vehicles may have been beautiful works of art and craftsmanship but they were out of reach for all but the very wealthy. Ford revolutionized the industry by making a vehicle that worked well(enough), could be made at low cost and had interchangeable pats. The Model-T was not as fancy and perhaps not as reliable as the bespoke autos of the time but it was functional.
The rigors of space are known conditions at this point and there are many proven systems that have already been developed. What we need are standardized hardware and communication protocols based on what we already know. If mass production could be applied to space exploration we could have hundreds or thousands of probes throughout our solar system.
Just think! We could have something like a game console...IN SPACE!
which formats information before beaming it back to Earth
And the alternative was...?
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Rod Serling, you are missed.
Hopefully someone is recording all of this. Even if we can't decode it NOW, chances are that we can at some point -- assuming it's real but mistranslated data and not just random garbage. Why not let BOINC clients chew on some of it and see what they come up with, or divert a small fraction of SETI clients. At least in this case, we KNOW it's trying to communicate with us. This should be a good opportunity to see if we have the capabilities to decipher it.
I know I'd be willing to let my machine ruminate on Voyager 2 data packets when it's running and I don't need the CPU time myself.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Will Voyager 2 be home next Tuesday between 10 and 2? That's when we have someone available.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
BENDER - But why would God think in binary? Unless...you're not God, but the remains of a computerised space probe that collided with God.
GOD - That seems probable.
Forget Aliens vs Predator... We now have...
Vger vs Vger2
The epic battle begins
Read what I mean, not what I wrote.
Launch date: August 20, 1977
The long answer requires recourse to general relativity, which I'm far too tired for I'm afraid.
Which is another prediction of general relativity!
The enemies of Democracy are
How can they possibly hope to decode alien language if they can't decode their own technology?
I think some little green persons from another planet/galaxy/universe found our toy and reprogrammed it to respond in their own language. Now, we just need to decode it in order to learn the secrets of FTL and inter-dimensional travel, as well as the question to the answer "42"!
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
Bob 1: We did some digging and found out Voyager was actually canceled five years ago, but due to a glitch in the payroll system, it was still getting paid and transmitting data. Bob 2: So we just fixed the glitch
Voyager 2's flight data system [...] formats information before beaming it back to Earth
"Damn it, we should have used XML!"
(ducks)
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Well that isn't offensive to anyone (Used to be Pentecostal)... That being said, it's still pretty witty.
Scientists now report Voyager is communicating once again with a clear, repeating message. Attempts to decipher the meaning of the message have proved unsuccessful so far. Message reads "All your base are belong to us".
The short answer is no, Voyager's frame isn't different enough to the Earth's for that huge a time dilation to have occurred purely because of that.
The long answer requires recourse to general relativity, which the margin of this post is too narrow to contain, I'm afraid.
There, fixed it.
Pissaw, young'uns don't know anything anymore; more likely a fried 1452 core sense amplifier. That bad-boy left Earth back when a 1024 Bit, 500 mS static ram was exotic, and yes that is bits not bytes and milliseconds not nanoseconds. Ferrite Core memory was the state of the art back in 1977, when hard-disk drives were the size of washing machines and I was a young'un myself punching Fortran code on to cards.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Uranus isn't an element.
Maybe he was referring to the dark matter on Uranus?
Micrometeorites have pitted the nameplate on the probe, and the "2" now looks more like a "6". Perhaps related to that kind of damage, the onboard communications seems to be glitching: it's dropping some bytes from the data stream and the headers are coming out "Vger" instead of "Voyager". And the most recent transmission consisted of garbage: just the string "TanruTanruTanru" repeated over and over!
STAR TREK defined it as as "WARP travel". I wonder if you can get partial credit for putting something outside your solar system? Typical humans, if there is standard, we find a way to just slip in under it. That should prepare the universe for what they can expect from us as a race though.
I wonder if some other alien race appropriated our equipment and is sending us a message in a different format, sort of like "Contact" and we just don't know how to read it.
NASA (Which stands for Never A Straight Answer) knows damn well what exactly voyager 2 is sending back. However, they do not want to release this information in fear that the standard notion of scientific understanding might be completely altered.
Fuck NASA and their corrupt overlords. I wish I could shit in a launch manager's mouth.
fuckin' magnets, how do they work?!
I have a fair bit of experience with spacecraft of this era, and they tended to have pretty similar architecture. This is speculation of course since I haven't seen the data, but typically, the telemetry from the bus (everything but the intruments) is formed by the main telemetry unit. Data from user systems (like the intruments) is generally collected and put into a data stream by a secondary encoder. Periodically, the main telemetry unit sends a sync pulse to the payload encoder to trigger it to spew out the stream, conveniently timed to align itself with the rest of the downlink, Given thereport the bus telemetry seems OK, so there's probably something wrong with the payload encoder, or the generation of the sync pulse. I have seen anomalies where the sync pulse was generated at the wrong time, generated at random, or generated more-or-less continuosly. Of course a simple failure of a multiplexer in the encoder, or the serial data interface to the encoder in the main TLM unit would cause similar problems. It might be possible to recover from the spurious sync pulse issue if some of the data is sufficiently repeatable to use an an alternate way of determining where in the encoder stream the data got to when the window in the downlink frame came around. You might lose some of it but might be able to retrieve the rest. That should be pretty easy since a lot of the instruments are turned off (which they are) - that will create a very distinct pattern of valid data an all zeros that would let you know where in the encoder stream you are. If there's off-time sync pulse what will happen is that you will get all the data but it will be rolled around so that what you thought was the "bus voltage" is actually showing up in the downlink as the "tank pressure" or something like that. That would probably work for a "continuously rolling" encoder stream as well, where it never receives any sync pulses.
Of course they probably figured it out themselves, but I have had a lot of luck working these sorts of issues so if anyone from JPL thinks they need a hand, I will happy to consult. Given that I use my REAL NAME it shouldn't be difficult to contact me.
If I understand correctly, the Voyager probes have been coasting through space at constant speed since their last respective gravity assist manouvers. I am curious as to how fast they would be travelling now had they been equipped with VASIMR or similar engines thrusting away over that time? It is conceivable that we could engineer a repair vehicle to catch up to Voyager 2 and fix the glitch.
Makes me wonder if there is a greater amount of cosmic rays in the heliosheath..
Microseconds, more likely. 500 milliseconsd is half a second, come on, be realistic.
someone mod parent up
The longer answer, of course, is;
NNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now I have to type in a nice long sentence all in lower case so the filter doesn't get all upset about all those capital letters up there. So I'll just say that the filter would complain "don't use so many caps, it's like yelling", well what if I'm feeling the need to do some yelling, such as the way I felt just now when I read the GP's question. Time dilation, furrf...
Hi,
It's good my relativity calculator came in handy.
Yes, I run the website at www.1728.com
wolf