Story here.
They’re on the edge now. Launched 34 years ago, it now takes 16 hours for a command to reach them. Data being sent back to us show “the edge of our Solar System is a froth of activity, like ‘an agitated jacuzzi’.”
Farewell. See you when you return in that Star Trek movie.
Voyager I has now covered 17,412,220,000 kilometers (that’s over 10 billion miles) of ‘deep space’…and it’s still working. The idea that we can build *anything *that can survive such conditions is truly mind boggling.
And yet my 2010 printer just broke down again.
Don’t let the door hit ya . . . .
It actually depends on how you define the solar system. There are some comets out there that are much more distant than Voyager is.
Could humans today detect an alien equivalent of Voyager passing through our solar system? Say between Jupiter and Mars?
I have only done some reading on the topic and I am not an expert but I would say no way for an equivalent sized craft. The thing that is amazing to me about Voyager is that they are able to communicate with it at all. They have to know exactly where it is (Ok, it doesn’t make any u-turns but still) and the signal is tiny. It would be closer to asking if there are intelligent beings in on Mars, could we tell if one of them turned on a light if we didn’t know exactly when and where to look.
One sixth of one percent of a Light Year.
unfortunately the nameplate will be obscured to read “VAGER” and they’ll be giggling too much to see the connection.
I think Voyager cost more than $20 and six minutes to build.
Cool-Has NASA pblished any pictires of the solar system from Voyager?
Yes, here is the family portrait, taken after some encouragement from Carl Sagan.
A little more impressive than “Elvis has left the building.”
Ah reminds me of the “postcard” we sent out, I found out it’s called the Pioneer plaque Pioneer plaque - Wikipedia Wonder if we’ll get any replies/visitors?
If so, we’ll be long gone before anyone sees it. Like I said, one sixth of one percent of a light year. It;s like we’re crowing because it left our living room and has reached the front porch.
Yes… whereas they’ve been outside planetary orbits for some time already.
The planets we know about
Does anyone serious think there’s any possibility that there are undiscovered planets (by present definition) orbiting Sol?
if by"we", you’re referring to bacteria or something appropriately smaller travelling by “foot”.
I read this as reptiles/visitors. Planning on joining the Fifth Column?
There are doubtless numerous dwarf planets waiting to be discovered in the outer solar system (one estimate I’ve seen is 40 objects larger than Pluto). It’s possible the largest could be as big as Mars or Earth. This is speculation based on Sedna’s unusual orbit. Over the next decade or so, the Pan-STARRS and LSST survey telescopes should give us a much better idea of what is out there.
There are some speculative theories (but scientific) that a large planet, or even a brown or red dwarf might be present in the outer solar system. It wouldn’t be a huge shock to find another planet out there.