satellite 19 billion miles from sun.

.jacksparrow.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/09/13/science/in-a-breathtaking-first-nasa-craft-exits-the-solar-system.html?source=hp&ei=vyMyUq3lNfCe7AaK5YG4Ag&q=nasa%20&oq=nasa%20&gs_l=mobile-gws-hp.12..0l5.4332.8552.0.10658.11.8.2.1.1.0.228.839.6j1j1.8.0....0...1c.1.26.mobile-gws-hp..0.11.983.Svkk4lvJjfc&pagewanted=all&


The nerd in me is fascinated by this!

Might be a stupid question, but how has it not been hit by a meteor or floating rock?

mad stuff !

Can't beat those Nuclear batteries. 48 year life for a battery created in 1977, mental.

The Russians and Americans have been using them in remote locations for decades and most of them are very safe and need only very thin shielding.

What we could do with energy if the world wasn't so scared of Nuclear power. But greedy energy companies will ensure we'll never have such technology.

But it's mad to think the little craft is 11.7 billion miles from Earth, and still in your living room in space terms !

It's insane to think that even at light speed it would take 14 billion years to reach the end of the (known) universe !!!

Warp drive anyone ?

Even more fascinating is the little Voyager craft would take, at it's current speed of 64,000 or so kmh, 67,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to our sun , a distance of a tiny 4 light years, tiny in space terms. meaning it would take 4 years at light speed to get there.

Space is mad !

joeperry

Deleted User wrote: »

Even more fascinating is the little Voyager craft would take, at it's current speed of 64,000 or so kmh, 67,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to our sun , a distance of a tiny 4 light years, tiny in space terms. meaning it would take 4 years at light speed to get there.

Space is mad !

That's mad!!

Rubecula

.jacksparrow. wrote: »

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/09/13/science/in-a-breathtaking-first-nasa-craft-exits-the-solar-system.html?source=hp&ei=vyMyUq3lNfCe7AaK5YG4Ag&q=nasa%20&oq=nasa%20&gs_l=mobile-gws-hp.12..0l5.4332.8552.0.10658.11.8.2.1.1.0.228.839.6j1j1.8.0....0...1c.1.26.mobile-gws-hp..0.11.983.Svkk4lvJjfc&pagewanted=all&


The nerd in me is fascinated by this!

Might be a stupid question, but how has it not been hit by a meteor or floating rock?

great link jacksparrow

Correction: September 12, 2013
A picture caption with an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to Voyager 1. It is a spacecraft, not a satellite.

(Satellites are orbiting bodies)

space is nearly entirely empty, basically there is nothing out there to hit Voyager.

Karl Stein

It's over ten hours away travelling at 186,000 miles per second.

Hard to get your head wrapped around those vast distances.

steve-o

According to the RTE 9 o'clock news it has left our galaxy. Now it's really moving!

Knifey Spoony

steve-o wrote: »

According to the RTE 9 o'clock news it has left our galaxy. Now it's really moving!

Nope, it has the left the solar system. It'll be millions of years at least before it leaves the Milky Way.


Mad to think that in a couple of million years these two spacecrafts will be the only evidence that we existed and might be furthest that something that we built will ever get from this planet.

sbsquarepants

Deleted User wrote: »

Even more fascinating is the little Voyager craft would take, at it's current speed of 64,000 or so kmh, 67,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to our sun , a distance of a tiny 4 light years, tiny in space terms. meaning it would take 4 years at light speed to get there.

Space is mad !

Maybe someone can clear this up for me because it does my head in.
Alpha centauri is 4 million light years away, so it takes light 4 million years to reach it, right -but isn't that actually wrong?
Light, ie actual photons of light reach it instantly due to contraction - it takes us 4 million years to watch it because we're moving slowly, but in the photons crazy high speed world it happened instantaneously - would the same be true of voyager if it somehow reached light speed (which I assume it never actually could, probably because it has mass?) Is that right? Or am I tripping?
Fúcking Einstein, head wrecking mother fúcker if ever there was one:mad:!

Karl Stein

sbsquarepants wrote: »

Fúcking Einstein, head wrecking mother fúcker if ever there was one:mad:!

I read a Brief History of Time and tbh I was making up my own 'explanations' (with lego-men in lego space ships and lots of mouthed sound effects) because I couldn't quite get the whole thing.

sbsquarepants

sbsquarepants wrote: »

Maybe someone can clear this up for me because it does my head in.
Alpha centauri is 4 million light years away, so it takes light 4 million years to reach it, right -but isn't that actually wrong?
Light, ie actual photons of light reach it instantly due to contraction - it takes us million years to watch it because we're moving slowly, but in the photons crazy high speed world it happened instantaneously - would the same be true of voyager if it somehow reached light speed (which I assume it never actually could, probably because it has mass?) Is that right? Or am I tripping?
Fúcking Einstein, head wrecking mother fúcker if ever there was one:mad:!

Sorry my mistake, it is Proxima Centauri I meant to say. Is 4 light years away.

Seemingly , even if you could travel a few hours at light speed, when you return to earth a few thousand years will have passed but you'll have aged only a few hours.

That's some mad freaking SHI£ !!!

This is where the "warp drive" comes into it as you bend space time or something, kinda like folding two parts of space, something like folding a A4 sheet in half, you make the two edges meet and you don't go anywhere, yet you're at the far side of the galaxy. You share the same space time or something.

Space is mental.

Knifey Spoony

There's an AMA going on over on Reddit by the team of engineers working with voyager now. Interesting stuff:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1m9wke/were_scientists_and_engineers_on_nasas_voyager/

Maximus Alexander

Knifey Spoony wrote: »

Nope, it has the left the solar system. It'll be millions of years at least before it leaves the Milky Way.


Mad to think that in a couple of million years these two spacecrafts will be the only evidence that we existed and might be furthest that something that we built will ever get from this planet.

Says who? I'd say our galaxy-spanning empire will be more than enough evidence.

Who knows lads, our solar system could be gobbled up by a big black hole, there are a fair few of them pretty close in the milky way !

Spooky thought !

Stella Virgo

Charlie Rock wrote: »

It's over ten hours away travelling at 186,000 miles per second.

Hard to get your head wrapped around those vast distances.

me thinks,u may need to re-calculate .....;)

Maximus Alexander

Deleted User wrote: »

Who knows lads, our solar system could be gobbled up by a big black hole, there are a fair few of them pretty close in the milky way !

Spooky thought !

That's not very likely. Black holes aren't just giant vacuum cleaners, they behave just like any other center of mass until you cross the event horizon. You would have to plow directly into one to be gobbled up by it, which in the vastness of space is vanishingly unlikely.

You might as well worry that the solar system could be gobbled up by NML Cygni, for example.

Maximus Alexander

Stella Virgo wrote: »

me thinks,u may need to re-calculate .....;)

18 hours is over ten hours?

28064212

Stella Virgo wrote: »

me thinks,u may need to re-calculate .....;)

Only slightly out, it's actually 17 hours and 22 minutes: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/13/science/in-a-breathtaking-first-nasa-craft-exits-the-solar-system.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

Also:

Duggy747

Have always been fascinated by the Voyager crafts. That really is an insane distance for a man-made object to have travelled in full working order, especially based on 70's tech.

Love this Carl Sagan tribute video based on them:

ozmo

Knifey Spoony wrote: »

Nope, it has the left the solar system. It'll be millions of years at least before it leaves the Milky Way.

Doesnt seem to be even that: More "Voyager now in interstellar space."

Quote from todays interview:

[–]NASAJPL 791 points 11 hours ago*
It's a very fine point and many people don't realize the Oort cloud is in interstellar space AND it's considered part of the solar system. We knew many media would make the error and we tried to make it clear in interviews. And you're right -- none of our materials say we've exited the solar system. Thankfully, some media have recognized the distinction. Mashable.com has a good story that explained the difference. http://mashable.com/2013/09/12/voyager-1-interstellar-space/ It's actually a cool factoid that the public could learn about our solar system. @VeronicaMcg Social Media Team

Knifey Spoony wrote: »

Mad to think that in a couple of million years these two spacecrafts will be the only evidence that we existed and might be furthest that something that
we built will ever get from this planet.

Thats cool.... Maybe we could also count the Radio waves we are giving off? - TV etc - dont know how far they will be detectable from Earth - but its sure to be a long way - hope the Aliens don't judge us too harshly on some of the content

28064212

My favourite Voyager fact: Voyager 1 and 2 have 69.63 kilobytes of memory each. That's 71,301 bytes.

To put it into context, the text of this page (prior to this post, with no images or external stylesheets) takes up 163,683 bytes

seamus

.jacksparrow. wrote: »

Might be a stupid question, but how has it not been hit by a meteor or floating rock?

The vastness of space really cannot be underestimated. It's in fact unfathomably large, basically impossible for our brains to properly visualise the scale.

And when it comes to space, it's all about the scale. There was an interesting animation created a few months back which shows all of the NEOs (Near-earth Objects) appearing in the order in which they were discovered. The number of objects increases exponentially the closer we get to today, until in the end it looks like the earth is surrounded by millions of randomly flying about objects ready to destroy us at a moment's notice.

Except that even though the Earth is big, the space between us and these objects is bigger. Way bigger, like the earth is a football floating in the Irish sea and the object is a grain of sand floating in Dublin Bay.

When either object is tiny, astronomically speaking, like Voyager, the chances of being randomly hit by a piece of passing rock are tiny. Like less than winning the euromillions. There are tiny particles, smaller than a grain of sand, which chances are have hit Voyager plenty of times, but these would be almost undetectable.

The same isn't necessarily true of craft in an Earth orbit because Earth has a tendency to attract crap towards it, and we've also managed to leave a lot of crap in space all by ourselves. So craft in orbit do need to watch out for stuff and move out of the way from time to time.

Knifey Spoony

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

Says who? I'd say our galaxy-spanning empire will be more than enough evidence.

Says me....:pac:

But yeah, that should have read "could be" instead of "will be". But, I think that entirely depends on whether your an optimist or pessimist. We could, in the future, develop technology and methods of travel that will allow us to colonize other plants/solar systems, avoiding destruction by asteroid or by death of the Sun. Or we could blow ourselves up in the coming decade, leaving only Voyager, and a number of other probes as evidence that we once existed.

mickmackey1

Knifey Spoony wrote: »

Nope, it has the left the solar system. It'll be millions of years at least before it leaves the Milky Way.

It will never leave the Milky Way, it doesn't have the speed to escape the gravitational attraction of the galaxy.

Maximus Alexander

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

That's not very likely. Black holes aren't just giant vacuum cleaners, they behave just like any other center of mass until you cross the event horizon. You would have to plow directly into one to be gobbled up by it, which in the vastness of space is vanishingly unlikely.

You might as well worry that the solar system could be gobbled up by NML Cygni, for example.

That's ok, I can sleep better tonight so !

Maximus Alexander

Knifey Spoony wrote: »

Says me....:pac:

But yeah, that should have read "could be" instead of "will be". But, I think that entirely depends on whether your an optimist or pessimist. We could, in the future, develop technology and methods of travel that will allow us to colonize other plants/solar systems, avoiding destruction by asteroid or by death of the Sun. Or we could blow ourselves up in the coming decade, leaving only Voyager, and a number of other probes as evidence that we once existed.

I guess I'm an optimist then! I'm of the opinion that if we were going to wipe ourselves out we probably would have done it during the cold war. There's something about mutually assured destruction that seems to hammer a bit of sense into people, even megalomaniacs .;)

Muas Tenek

Tip of the hat to another event from 1977


"Ladies and Gentlemen............... Voyager has left the Solar System"

ps200306

ozmo wrote: »

Quote from todays interview:

[–]NASAJPL 791 points 11 hours ago*
It's a very fine point and many people don't realize the Oort cloud is in interstellar space AND it's considered part of the solar system. We knew many media would make the error and we tried to make it clear in interviews. And you're right -- none of our materials say we've exited the solar system. Thankfully, some media have recognized the distinction. Mashable.com has a good story that explained the difference. http://mashable.com/2013/09/12/voyager-1-interstellar-space/ It's actually a cool factoid that the public could learn about our solar system. @VeronicaMcg Social Media Team

I'm so glad someone pointed that out. It's been annoying me so much I drew a picture based on the Wikipedia Oort Cloud page ...



On this scale, Voyager (marked with the red X) is still nearly at the centre of the Solar System, and will not leave it until the year 19,500 (when it will be just a quarter of the way to the nearest star) !!!

slade_x

28064212 wrote: »

My favourite Voyager fact: Voyager 1 and 2 have 69.63 kilobytes of memory each. That's 71,301 bytes.

To put it into context, the text of this page (prior to this post, with no images or external stylesheets) takes up 163,683 bytes

I never knew those vehicles were so limited in memory capacity.

However your entire post in plain text including your signature is approx 748 bytes

You could fit your entire post including signature with formatting 14 times over in a .docx format @ 163,683 bytes. One of which amounts to less than 11,256 bytes (>11KB)

28064212

slade_x wrote: »

However your entire post in plain text including your signature is approx 748 bytes

I said the entire page i.e. the HTML source code

Maximus Alexander

slade_x wrote: »

I never knew those vehicles were so limited in memory capacity.

However your entire post in plain text including your signature is approx 748 bytes

You could fit your entire post including signature with formatting 14 times over in a .docx format @ 163,683 bytes. One of which amounts to less than 11,256 bytes (>11KB)

Bear in mind we are talking memory, not storage. The tape decks on the Voyagers have about 60 MB of capacity.