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Wouldn't they just look at the nearest star first? On the scale of light years, it's so close to us it's extremely obvious where it came from, and will be for
by godshatter 9y ago
Wouldn't they just look at the nearest star first? On the scale of light years, it's so close to us it's extremely obvious where it came from, and will be for many thousands of years. Just backtracking it's course should be enough for a much longer time after that. Sure, millions of years from now it might be harder to figure out, but we'll be long gone by then. They can come bother our descendents, whatever form they might take. For the period of time our civilization is likely to survive if aliens stumble upon it, they will be able to find us rather quickly.
- rm_-rf_slash 9y agoDepends on how far it goes and if any other gravitational forces act on it along the way. Sometimes I wonder if the decision to turn Voyager around to produce the photo of the "pale blue dot" will someday end up fucking with aliens who couldn't imagine another species who would launch a deep space probe backwards.
- tinus_hn 9y agoReaistically once you go far enough the only things to see that you couldn't see before are behind you. There isn't much blocking the view of the distant objects (and we're never going to get a close-up of them) once you leave the earth's atmosphere so once you reach the edge of the solar system the only things that are interesting to look at are behind you.
- rm_-rf_slash 9y agoThat's a good point. It would be nice to have an actual photograph of our Oort Cloud, after all.
- Semiapies 9y agoPerhaps all intelligent species take star system selfies.
- Chaebixi 9y agoIIRC, Voyager's camera is on a movable arm. The probe itself has never "turned" and always has its antenna dish pointed at Earth. New Horizons had a different design and works more like you describe; where the whole probe has to turn to point the camera.