Voyager 1 Approaches Boundary of Interstellar Space

Holy shit, the V1 is that far, now. This thread is full of awesome funny.
 
techrat said:
Ladies and Gentlemen... the result of watching too many movies where "All aliens are evil beings trying to kill us". Let me guess, you must think all the Commies are plotting to kidnap your freedoms, too.
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Haven't seen the documentary Iron Sky yet haven't you?
 
Stone Cold said:
It's very interesting that we've been listening to the sky and have found zero evidence of artificial signals. Star Trek fans should be disappointed.
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not really, as stated here:
Godmachine said:
As it turns out that "echo" only lasts for about 15 light years before it is absorbed and distorted by dust clouds of varying degree's.
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This was reported a couple years ago.
 
SkribbelKat said:
Just think, in 300 years, it'll come back to Earth inside a giganitc robot machine and James Kirk will save everyone from certain doom.
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Meanwhile, Pioneer 10 gets shot up by those damn Klingons...but he finally asks the most fundamental question: "What does God need with a starship?"
 
You know what's sad? The technology to make a vehicle go far like that without being refueld exists and is being used yet the oil industry is keeping us in the dark ages by not allowing this technology to be used for general purpose travel. Imagine if that technology had been developed since then how far it would be.

Of course there's still less resistance in space but it still needs to adjust and readjust itself over time.
 
Red Squirrel said:
You know what's sad? The technology to make a vehicle go far like that without being refueld exists and is being used yet the oil industry is keeping us in the dark ages by not allowing this technology to be used for general purpose travel. Imagine if that technology had been developed since then how far it would be.

Of course there's still less resistance in space but it still needs to adjust and readjust itself over time.
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It's coasting, not moving under its own power. The nuclear battery is just for generating power to operate the survey equipment and transmit stuff back to Earth.
 
Red Squirrel said:
You know what's sad? The technology to make a vehicle go far like that without being refueld exists and is being used yet the oil industry is keeping us in the dark ages by not allowing this technology to be used for general purpose travel. Imagine if that technology had been developed since then how far it would be.

Of course there's still less resistance in space but it still needs to adjust and readjust itself over time.
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Space allows it to coast. Nothing to resist its rate of speed other than actual objects and gas/dust. It'll keep moving at its current rate for a very long time unless it comes into contact with a mass body of some kind which could end up slingshotting it or destroying it via impact. We still have no real idea what's beyond the Heliosphere other than guesses. There very well could be an extremely faint brown dwarf or 10 of them or hundreds of them or thousands or more just sitting right outside the terminal shock.

So many unpredictable variables , I just don't think it'll drift endlessly into the abyss.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
The likelihood of anyone ever finding the Pioneer/Voyager/New Horizons spacecraft after they stop transmitting approaches 0%. Aliens are much more likely to identify us by the expanding halo of radio light (full of unencrypted audio and video broadcasts) we've been generating for the past 70 years or so.
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This. It's very possible they already know where we are,but think we're in no way ready for contact yet.
 
More like nuclear power in the public's eye is the ultimate scary boogeyman. It doesn't matter what you follow up the phrase 'nuclear energy' with, most people have a kneejerk reaction of, "it's just a bomb waiting to happen and will kill us all!" See: Germany and Japan. They've both collectively had such severe kneejerk reactions to Fukushima that they've both fallen into having an unsustainable energy policy.

But, yeah, Voyager has been relying on inertia for it's momentum for decades now. Still impressive that the reactor is set to go another 13 or so years though.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
The likelihood of anyone ever finding the Pioneer/Voyager/New Horizons spacecraft after they stop transmitting approaches 0%. Aliens are much more likely to identify us by the expanding halo of radio light (full of unencrypted audio and video broadcasts) we've been generating for the past 70 years or so.
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Check this out, it's a telescope array that's going to span about 3000 kilometers. It's called the Square Kilometer Array. It'll be the equivalent to building a single telescope that's 1 square kilometer big.

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

It's going to be used to look back in time to the beginning of the universe, but could also be used to read any alien radio signals up to about 100 light years away.

Here's a really interesting video about it (45 mins):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHS4bsdgn50
 
Yeah it still needs a lot of energy to be able to continue communicating. I'm sure the radio waves it sends are in the MW range if GW range to be able to make it as far as earth. It makes a HSPA tower look like a kids walkie talky. Imagine if these nuclear batteries were made available in cars.

But back on the Voyager topic it will definitely be interesting to see what it finds. My guess is that it wont be anything all that different, just, more space. But I could be wrong, could be some gases or other interesting stuff of that sort. Or it will be like a video game and it will appear at the other side of the map. The stuff we see beyond is just part of the background. :p
 
Another amazing fact of Voyager is its fuel. 24 pressed Plutonium-238 oxide spheres and a total of 3 RTG's (radioisotope thermoelectric generators) produce 157 watts of power per RTG for a total of 470 watts of power.

It has a DTR (Digital Tape Recorder) able to store a whopping 62.4 Megabytes per recording. It can not communicate directly with Earth , it stores data requested and transmits it cycles. It still has 5 active instruments out of a total 11.

Pretty amazing that after all these years in such a cold , near dead state .. it continues on functioning.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Yeah it still needs a lot of energy to be able to continue communicating. I'm sure the radio waves it sends are in the MW range if GW range to be able to make it as far as earth. It makes a HSPA tower look like a kids walkie talky. Imagine if these nuclear batteries were made available in cars.

But back on the Voyager topic it will definitely be interesting to see what it finds. My guess is that it wont be anything all that different, just, more space. But I could be wrong, could be some gases or other interesting stuff of that sort. Or it will be like a video game and it will appear at the other side of the map. The stuff we see beyond is just part of the background. :p
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The wiki article on them lists that their initial power output for all equipment was 470 watts. As of October 2011, Voyager 1 was making about 270 watts. Only a part of that goes into transmission of signals back home.
 
Stone Cold said:
It's very interesting that we've been listening to the sky and have found zero evidence of artificial signals. Star Trek fans should be disappointed.
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Godmachine said:
As it turns out that "echo" only lasts for about 15 light years before it is absorbed and distorted by dust clouds of varying degree's.
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We actually hear stuff all the time. Large-scale SETI programs have consistently picked up radio 'events,' short radio signals, and preferentially within the plane of the Milky Way galaxy. The problem is that they always disappear and never repeat. Ionized hydrogen gas in interstellar space muddles the radio waves and makes radio sources appear to twinkle. Our current radio telescopes may not be big enough for what we're trying to do.

The square kilometer array will be large enough to detect powerful radio sources like weather radar on planets within a few hundred light years.
 
Yeah, I was hanging with Andrew Siemion last winter, over my head the math to emulate a larger antenna with smaller ones, but he was very excited about it.
 
I certainly hope we find intelligent life on other planets since there is not any intelligent life on this planet.
 
The fact that anyone realistically believes we are the only life in the universe makes me laugh. We have barely begun to understand the incomprehensible vastness of our universe and some people are convinced that we are it. That is some amazing arrogance there.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
The fact that anyone realistically believes we are the only life in the universe makes me laugh. We have barely begun to understand the incomprehensible vastness of our universe and some people are convinced that we are it. That is some amazing arrogance there.
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Exactly. Too many people seem to think that the universe is only as old as mankind is. The fact of the matter is that the universe is estimated to be 13+/- Billion years old and modern mankind, (toolmakers, makers of cloths from animal hide, developing awareness to their seasonal surroundings) has only been around for 50,000+/- years. Yes, older "species" of mankind are recorded, but the era where man has started his dominance and development of intellect is only about 50,000 years old. So between the start of the universe some 13 billion years ago until the age of man, there is no telling what other life forces have been developing and how advance they could be. Here we are looking to what life will be like in about 100 years for us, but what about the last million years or more for other life forms? Don't you think it's possible that they could be so advanced that they know how to remain hidden from our means of detecting their existence? Our technology is only 100 years advanced. Do you really think that we have learned enough in this 100 year span to know how to detect intelligent life that could be thousands of years more advanced then us? I think it's very likely that they are well aware of us and have been monitoring our advancement. Believe it or not, but just last year a newly found, un-contacted Indian tribe was just discovered in the Brazilian rain forest. So if man is still finding new life on our planet, how can we not think there is still life out in the vast universe to find? To think we are alone is about as ignorant as you can get.
 
jojo69 said:
no, no I don't

Thousands upon thousands of planets out there, SETI crunching untold terabytes of RF intercepts for decades and we hear... ...nothing.

Common sense tells me that the universe should be awash with coherent signals, but its not.

Makes you wonder.
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Because SETI only looks at one frequency at a time. Any significantly advanced culture would have moved to multi frequency communications as that is more efficient for send large a,outs of data. The problem with looking for alien terrestrial communications is that as the signal expands out from its source the signal weakens. Given enough distance, the signal would be so weak and spread out that the original information wouldn't be distinguishable from background noise.
 
As far as the v'ger references, if you call yourself a nerd, you should be ashamed. V'ger isn't voyager 1. It's voyager 6.
 
--90000--66740_product_1169463021_thumb_large.jpg
 
FrEaKy said:
News in 5 years.

Google and Facebook decide to merge, creating a new company, they are now calling themselves "Skynet"
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That's it! If there are Zuckerberg clone cyborgs running Android OS 5 years from now, I'm blaming you for giving them the idea.

DejaWiz said:
Wait a minute. Wouldn't that be Skynet+?
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Haha! Yeah, it's Skynet+!

Lebowski said:
As far as the v'ger references, if you call yourself a nerd, you should be ashamed. V'ger isn't voyager 1. It's voyager 6.
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Thank goodness I'm not a nerd in real life.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
We actually hear stuff all the time. Large-scale SETI programs have consistently picked up radio 'events,' short radio signals, and preferentially within the plane of the Milky Way galaxy. The problem is that they always disappear and never repeat. Ionized hydrogen gas in interstellar space muddles the radio waves and makes radio sources appear to twinkle. Our current radio telescopes may not be big enough for what we're trying to do.

The square kilometer array will be large enough to detect powerful radio sources like weather radar on planets within a few hundred light years.
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Hearing stuff and receiving it aren't always the same thing , it all depends on what the wave form has encountered on its journey and none of SETI's radio events have triggered a true long term investigation. The only one called the "WOW" signal was deemed to be terrestrial in origin by SETI's science team.

I don't think the SKA is going to really make a dent in the fundamental issue with using radio search techniques. The main reason is we are using radio signals to look for a VERY narrow branch of time frame and technology in an alien civilization. By the time we send out a signal or they do thousands upon thousands of years can pass which means when the signal arrives it could fall on deaf ears as it were since no one will be using old fashion radio frequencies or not enough will. Again , even if it arrives it could very well be so incredibly weak that it will either disintegrate into nothingness or it will just pass by.

Then there is another problem , light speed while the fastest thing we know of inside space is actually pretty damn slow when you consider the size of even a galaxy. Sending out a signal or receiving it could just arrive to late. What if , mathematically speaking , very few advanced civilizations even make it into our stage of development? What if many get to our stage of development 50 years ago during the height of the cold war and things just become a nightmare as Nuclear War becomes inevitable? You could finally be ready to send that signal then suddenly Nuclear Holocaust destroy's that civilization before it even has a chance to receive it?

I applaud SETI for what they are attempting to do but they really have very little hope of being able to detect a signal from a peaceful civilization in our galaxy. I don't believe an alien force will come seeking us out for our water or gold or some silly Hollywood story line. There is more water on Saturn's Enceladus than all the water we have on the Earth. It would be much easier to get at so that knocks that out of plausible reasoning for a hostile visit. Gold? There are billions of tons of it in rocks (Asteroids) floating all over our solar system. The only unique thing on Earth is us , if there are hostile aliens then there are many more basic life forms just like here on Earth. So unless we have some kind of special "thing" that we don't know of and that they can harness than we're a giant waste of time for anything even a few hundreds beyond us in technology.
 
jojo69 said:
Thousands upon thousands of planets out there, SETI crunching untold terabytes of RF intercepts for decades and we hear... ...nothing.

Common sense tells me that the universe should be awash with coherent signals, but its not.
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You have to consider the time. The amount of time that we have had radio signals is microscopic compared to how long the human race has been around, the the amount of time that we have been around is microscopic compared to the age of the earth.

Even if life developes of millions of planets, what are the odds that life will develop on a timeline that would align with our extremely short (by cosmic standards) ability to recieve the signals?
 
Imagine if there were no mass extinctions on Earth, we as a life form on this planet would be so much more advanced than what we are now. Of course we might not be homo sapiens, but sentient nonetheless.
The vastness of space and time does not play well with our chances of finding others out there. There could be civilizations that have gone extinct and others that are just starting out.
Reminds me of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_of_an_Eye_(Star_Trek:_Voyager)
 
techrat said:
Ladies and Gentlemen... the result of watching too many movies where "All aliens are evil beings trying to kill us". Let me guess, you must think all the Commies are plotting to kidnap your freedoms, too.
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Honestly, it's more like "common sense". Or maybe "paying attention in school".

I mean, how many times has a superior (technological) civilization encountered a more primitive one in human history? Or, heck, even extend that to ANY species busy evolving away on the planet. More advanced runs into less advanced.

Dozens?

Hundreds, maybe?

What happens to the less-advanced civilization? Oh, yeah, that's right, wiped out with almost no trace left of them. So why would we ever assume any more technologically advanced race than us would be any different?
 
DejaWiz said:
Wait a minute. Wouldn't that be Skynet+?
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Skynet already exists. It's the actual name of the program I use daily in the Air Force to record aircraft time, ops checks, etc on the MQ-1 Predator. I have no idea how the software developer got that approved for the name. :p
 
TeeJayHoward said:
I don't know about that. I recall reading a short story about some people that were frozen on their trip to their new planet. They were going to be teraformers. When they got there, they noticed that the planet was already occupied. While they were asleep, ships got faster and faster and eventually passed the slow, old-tech ship on their way to the new planet.
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The general conceit is that, if it takes more than 50 years to send a ship to a location you are interested in...don't bother. Within 25 years, you'll have a ship that could get there in half the time, so the total trip from time of discovery would still be shorter than if you'd sent the 50-year-ship on the mission in the first place (and you'll have several-decades-newer scientific equipment and several-decades-better-informed crew on board, as well).
 
dderidex said:
Honestly, it's more like "common sense". Or maybe "paying attention in school".

I mean, how many times has a superior (technological) civilization encountered a more primitive one in human history? Or, heck, even extend that to ANY species busy evolving away on the planet. More advanced runs into less advanced.

Dozens?

Hundreds, maybe?

What happens to the less-advanced civilization? Oh, yeah, that's right, wiped out with almost no trace left of them. So why would we ever assume any more technologically advanced race than us would be any different?
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No its paranoia fed to you through media and your acceptance of it as a probable reality. The only reason hostile aliens would even be interested in Earth would be for us. We are the only highly evolved life form on it and even at that if this hostile species can get to us than they are several hundred years at least a head of us technologically.

All the canned "reasons" why hostile alien species would want to come here don't pan out in real science. Water is not rare , there are unimaginable amounts trapped in comets in our solar system , TRILLIONS of comets in the Oort cloud that hold many thousands of times worth of water in frozen form. It won't be our climate they will come for , its very likely they will be quite comfortable aboard whatever form of travel they would be using since even FTL travel will require such accommodations unless of course they are a hyper advanced species that has learned how to fold space and open a true "Wormhole" via manipulation of dark energy or negative mass particles.

I'm sorry but REAL science just can't justify fantasy writers and Hollywood's interpretation when in reality you don't even need hostile aliens for things to "go wrong" quick. All you need is a hyper advanced society that travels abroad in our galaxy that also happens to carry dormit viral organisms that jump to us and create a pandemic. It happened when the Europeans visited America and brought small pox. To the natives of North/Central/South America's , the Europeans were first thought of as gods come down from the heavens to bestow them with wisdom. Instead they brought filth and disease. I think this is much more likely than the Borg coming for visit to absorb us into the collective.

People really need to remember that fantasy is fantasy , it is inspiration , it is wonderful but it is still FANTASY. Until we face our first encounter then we aren't going to have any idea how it will pan out but acting all crazy isn't going to help. Mass Hysteria won't make alien small pox go away.
 
jojo69 said:
Is there still time to catch the thing and destroy it?

It has a fucking map back to us and how our DNA is and everything...terrifyingly stupid.
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Did you even read what you posted? :rolleyes:

Somehow I think if some alien race is busy fucking around in interstellar space outside our solar system and manage to find a tiny device in a vast expanse of space, they A) could find us without it based on our radio signals weve been beaming into space for a long time and B) can wipe us off the face of our planet anyway.

Do you really think aliens need a map and a legend to our DNA to blow us up if they are so inclined???

:tard:
 
dderidex said:
Honestly, it's more like "common sense". Or maybe "paying attention in school".

I mean, how many times has a superior (technological) civilization encountered a more primitive one in human history? Or, heck, even extend that to ANY species busy evolving away on the planet. More advanced runs into less advanced.

Dozens?

Hundreds, maybe?

What happens to the less-advanced civilization? Oh, yeah, that's right, wiped out with almost no trace left of them. So why would we ever assume any more technologically advanced race than us would be any different?
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That is what I am saying. I think patterns emerge in this reality. Competition, supply and demand, I suspect these of being very common principles. It is at least as likely that anything that makes it here will be hostile as nicey nice.
 
Godmachine said:
No its paranoia fed to you through media and your acceptance of it as a probable reality. The only reason hostile aliens would even be interested in Earth would be for us. We are the only highly evolved life form on it and even at that if this hostile species can get to us than they are several hundred years at least a head of us technologically.

All the canned "reasons" why hostile alien species would want to come here don't pan out in real science. Water is not rare , there are unimaginable amounts trapped in comets in our solar system , TRILLIONS of comets in the Oort cloud that hold many thousands of times worth of water in frozen form. It won't be our climate they will come for , its very likely they will be quite comfortable aboard whatever form of travel they would be using since even FTL travel will require such accommodations unless of course they are a hyper advanced species that has learned how to fold space and open a true "Wormhole" via manipulation of dark energy or negative mass particles.

I'm sorry but REAL science just can't justify fantasy writers and Hollywood's interpretation when in reality you don't even need hostile aliens for things to "go wrong" quick. All you need is a hyper advanced society that travels abroad in our galaxy that also happens to carry dormit viral organisms that jump to us and create a pandemic. It happened when the Europeans visited America and brought small pox. To the natives of North/Central/South America's , the Europeans were first thought of as gods come down from the heavens to bestow them with wisdom. Instead they brought filth and disease. I think this is much more likely than the Borg coming for visit to absorb us into the collective.

People really need to remember that fantasy is fantasy , it is inspiration , it is wonderful but it is still FANTASY. Until we face our first encounter then we aren't going to have any idea how it will pan out but acting all crazy isn't going to help. Mass Hysteria won't make alien small pox go away.
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If aliens visited us, that would instantly mean we aren't top of the food chain anymore. Any being that can travel interstellar space is going to be much more advanced than us. We are a destructive race, constant wars, corruption, greed and so on. I'd be kind of worried about humanity's future if a more advanced race discovered us.
 
Godmachine said:
All the canned "reasons" why hostile alien species would want to come here don't pan out in real science. Water is not rare , there are unimaginable amounts trapped in comets in our solar system , TRILLIONS of comets in the Oort cloud that hold many thousands of times worth of water in frozen form. It won't be our climate they will come for , its very likely they will be quite comfortable aboard whatever form of travel they would be using since even FTL travel will require such accommodations unless of course they are a hyper advanced species that has learned how to fold space and open a true "Wormhole" via manipulation of dark energy or negative mass particles.

I'm sorry but REAL science just can't justify fantasy writers and Hollywood's interpretation when in reality you don't even need hostile aliens for things to "go wrong" quick. All you need is a hyper advanced society that travels abroad in our galaxy that also happens to carry dormit viral organisms that jump to us and create a pandemic. It happened when the Europeans visited America and brought small pox.
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There is...a lot wrong with this argument.

First off, the odds of any alien species being DNA-based is...well, basically nonexistent. Sure, somewhere out there, maybe, life may have, indeed, evolved EXACTLY as it did on Earth. But the odds of us meeting those 'evolved identically to us' races are pretty much nill.

So any race we run into will...sure...have diseases and such. But they will almost certainly be totally genetically incompatible with us and not be able to make heads or tails of our genetic structure so as to infect us. Their equivalent of 'viruses', anyway, will be absolutely and totally harmless to us. Their bacteria? Sure, maybe a risk...maybe. Wash your hands, though, you'll be fine.

As to water...where did that come from? Of course they won't be here for that.

However, you'll note we do have a planet in the right distance from the sun whereby water is liquid. Venus, arguably (maybe, with sufficient terraforming) and Mars also COULD hold liquid water. So that's really the issue. Territory! Same as North America to the Europeans...wasn't the water they came for. Or the food. Or the view. It was land.

And that's the problem. What can Earth hold, 10 billion inhabitants? 20 billion, if uncomplaining? Presumably, across our solar system (Venus, Mars, a few moons maybe) 100 billion total? That seems a pretty big chunk of 'habitable space' that you only need to get rid of this one backwards, trivial, hairless-monkey-race to have all for yourself...
 
Dekoth-E- said:
The fact that anyone realistically believes we are the only life in the universe makes me laugh. We have barely begun to understand the incomprehensible vastness of our universe and some people are convinced that we are it. That is some amazing arrogance there.
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While it is laughable due to the complexity and vastness of the the universe, the Fermi paradox makes a great point. Personally I can't see humans being the only sentient life forms. I think we have "an age problem", our time to search in a cosmic perspective is just unfathomably short.

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

Also in that link a few good reasons why we might not have seen/heard another extraterrestrial civilization yet?

Cyclical extinction events surely are part of the natural mechanics of the universe on all levels; changing states or structures for instance. The inherent dynamic nature of physics, not much is static if at all, for a very long time. This does not necessarily mean doom for a civilization but given faster than light travel has not been invented on a large scale, super novae etc. could present some "problems".
 
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