Voyager 1 officially in interstellar space

[vienna]

"I'll bring the fava beans..."







<O>

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Dowly

@Skybird

You make good points, but what is to say that the other lifeforms are as selfish and
outright a-holes like humanity?

Men in Black

Human thought is so primitive it's looked upon as an infectious disease in some of the better galaxies. That kind of makes you proud, doesn't it? huh?

[eddie]

With the power supply of Voyager 1 going out by 2025, what are the odds of it being discovered by another life form of some kind? A dead piece of tin, traveling through the unimaginable vastness of outer space, the odds against someone or something coming across this small craft would be huge!

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by eddie

With the power supply of Voyager 1 going out by 2025, what are the odds of it being discovered by another life form of some kind? A dead piece of tin, traveling through the unimaginable vastness of outer space, the odds against someone or something coming across this small craft would be huge!

Would you like that rounded to the nearest zero?

Chances are overwhelming that it will either burn up in some sun, smash into something and be obliterated, or simply drift no where near anything or anyone forever.

[Dowly]

I do believe 2025 marks when it can't send messages to Earth anymore.
The data might still survive?
I have no idea how it's stored, someone else who knows hopefully can explain that.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by eddie

Now the debate has started over whether or not it has really made it into interstellar space. According to this article, maybe not. But its way out there!

"Voyager still has to face the solar system's biggest frontier: a huge haze of comets known as the Oort Cloud. The science team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory estimates that it could be another 200 to 300 years before Voyager enters the Oort Cloud, and another 30,000 years before it comes out the other side. The Oort Cloud may extend outward for 100,000 astronomical units (where 1 AU equals the average Earth-sun distance). That's more than a third of the way to the next star over."

Don't think it will run into any aliens anytime soon.

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/where...id=msnhp&pos=7

1 AU =93,000,000 The Oort Cloud iss (93,000,000,000,000-Space/time doth continuem! Einstein was one of them

[eddie]

Originally Posted by Dowly

I do believe 2025 marks when it can't send messages to Earth anymore.
The data might still survive?
I have no idea how it's stored, someone else who knows hopefully can explain that.

I have no idea how much data it can store, on its computer, but after 36 years in space, it might being hitting its limit soon! I would think JPL would download its data on a regular basis, because of its limitations, but that's just a guess by me. Another thing to think about, Voyager 1 and 2 are using computers from the 1970's. I doubt their storage capacity is any where near what they could have with todays PC's.

[Penguin]

Originally Posted by vienna

Agreed on that point. Did you know Carl Sagan is reputed to have fought long and hard as Chairman of the committee who put together the disc contents to not have Chuck Berry included on the final disc?

There goes all my respect for Mr Sagan - maybe he got bribed by that Beethoven guy who managed to get two songs on the record . If I'd be an alien overlord and I'd find out they skipped "Johnny B Goode" I'd send in the Vogons to blow this planet up.

Seriously, I haven't heard this song before the early 80s, but its first 30 seconds still give me shivers on my back an an ear orgasm untill today.

[Platapus]

I would have though that the Voyager RTGs would provide power for a lot longer. But I guess even their thermal-couples just wear out.

[vienna]

From Wikipedia:

The radio communications system of Voyager 1 was designed to be used up to and beyond the limits of the Solar System. The communication system includes a 3.7 metres (12 ft) diameter parabolic dish high-gain antenna to send and receive radio waves via the three Deep Space Network stations on the Earth.

When Voyager 1 is unable to communicate directly with the Earth, its digital tape recorder (DTR) can record up to 69.63 kilobytes of data for transmission at another time. As of 2013, signals from Voyager 1 take over 17 hours to reach Earth.

2015: Termination of Data Tape Recorder (DTR) operations (limited by ability to capture 1.4 kbit/s data using a 70 m/34 m antenna array. This is the minimum rate at which the DTS can read-out data.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1


What I found notable in this information is the storage is on a DTR; the type of tape used must be absolutely amazing to have survived intact this long...


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[Platapus]

"signals from Voyager 1 take over 17 hours to reach Earth." Yikes!

I still have a hard time visioning this.

[vienna]

It's what happens when you have a bad mobile plan...


<O>

[Platapus]

Those "out of area" roaming charges must be a bear!

[eddie]

Its amazing what the people at JPL can do, even at the distance these spacecraft are from Earth! Voyager 2 had a glitch with its computer program some time ago.(Back in 2010) They couldn't read the data it was sending back. They believe it got hit by cosmic ray, and it affected its programming. Its all done in 1 and zero's and they believe it flipped a zero to a one. So they figured it out, and sent a signal to it to correct itself. It took (at that time) 13 hours to send a message and the same to receive it. So they waited a whole day to see the result, and they had fixed it! They could read the data being sent back again, and it was only 8.6 billion miles from Earth!

http://www.universetoday.com/65683/v...m-dr-ed-stone/

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Dowly

@Skybird

You make good points, but what is to say that the other lifeforms are as selfish and
outright a-holes like humanity?

I do not even assume these^ "qualities" in alien intelligent life. My argument is we have no clue about what others are like, and that maybe we could not even recognise them as "intelligent life". Maybe they also cannot recognise us - not only too superior but also too inferior intelligences are hard to be recognised as "intelligent life", for both are beyond the perception standard of the observer.

We can and do not know, and I advise caution, therefore. We should not project human reason, nature and motives onto the rest of the cosmos, including other life forms. "Alien" does not mean "human just with green skin, four legs and a third eye". "Alien" means: beyond all experience, and beyond all standards one knows to compare to. To say it in germa, I do not know how to put it in English: "unfaßbar fremdartig. "