Any chance that JPL will power up the camera to take a quick picture of the Sun at that distance?
But do zombies still transmit data that far out?
That quote and the associated picture of our “pale blue dot” is quite simply the most amazing and profound image and text ever written. Anyone with even a modicum of interest in science and our planet should devour everything Carl Sagan ever wrote or mused.
Decades later, reading that still moves me. The man embodied the perfect balance of genius and delivery. He died too soon and our world is less without him. 
Not a zombie thread, given the subject.
Or this. It’s guaranteed to repel any hostile aliens. On the other hand, if they’re totally different from us, they may actually like it.
I work at Nasa. It’s my job. I expect the next bit to arrive sometime this evening, so don’t bug me: I’m busy.
An important point to make about very faint signals. Faint signals don’t stop being detectable when they are weaker than the background noise. This is a direct result of Shannon’s law on communication in a noisy channel. What you do have is a relationship between information rate and signal to noise ratio. Even if the signal is weaker than the noise, there is a non-zero information transfer rate. It just gets slower and slower as the signal level drops.
Does NASA have two-way communication with Voyager I? Can they send out commands to it, like they send commands to the not-so-distant Mars scouts? And it there a command to tell it to slow down the transmission rate?
Learjeff? Can you take some time to fight our ignorance, in between bits?
As I noted several posts above, the point of slowing down the transmission rate is that each bit has to be transmitted continuously for a long time (meaning some substantial fraction of a second), so the receiver can get a lengthy sampling of each bit, the better to get good statistics for it. So what bit rate is it sending these day?
Heh. Or even more likely, “Stoney and Meatloaf.”
I was unaware of this particular bit of history, which makes me ever so glad that I took the time to read this thread! 
I’ve watched a number of programs with Carl Sagan and I must agree, the man was very eloquent.
This thread alone, makes the cost of a membership and the time that I spend perusing the contents of The Straight Dope, worth every penny. 
that’s another reflection of just how big the place is..
Sorry, I was just joking.
Thanks! I just learned of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
I think I’ll rename my soul band to the Dunning Kruger Soul Band. (The Dunning Kruger Band is already taken, darnit.)
Note that this does not mean it takes 16 hours to transmit a picture. (I’m pretty sure it takes far longer at this point, actually). It means that it takes 16 hours for the radio signal, which is traveling at the speed of light, to get from the spacecraft to the earth. Back in 1990 when the last pale blue dot photos were taken, the spacecraft was “only” about 5 light hours from earth.
[Stupid]
Well gosh, can’t they just fly out to it and upgrade the equipment?
[/stupid]
“Space is big. Really big. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down to the chemists, but that’s nothing compared to space.” - Douglas Adams
I say after it passed Pluto it was out of the solar system.
a bit unrelated but the mars rover opportunity is still roving around on Mars, 9 years after it landed (even though its original mission was only 92 days!). It managed this because it has solar panels, periodically cleaned by the wind (unlike curiosity, which will only last 4-5 years because of its nuclear source)
The answers to many of these questions can be found at the Voyager team’s NASA website. And if you still have questions, you can email the team directly.