4 ms·

Electromagnetic waves will die off and become indistinguishable from background radiation after a certain distance. Not so much for physical objects.

• maxander 6y ago
  The famous Douglas Adams quote is relevant: "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." The odds of an alien civilization picking up one of our probes, even if we send out thousands of them, is preposterously small. Imagine trying to such an object if it had been left floating at an unknown point in the ocean; now consider how much bigger interstellar space is than Earth's oceans.
  • gorgoiler 6y ago
    “It’s like trying to find your car keys in a field using a pair of binoculars.” I cannot remember where this quote came from, but I think it was something to do with a missing Russian cargo vessel in the Atlantic.
• qubex 6y ago
  These a few tiny craft sent off into the depths of interstellar space. The chances of anybody ever picking one up are so ridiculously small, so utterly infinitesimal, it doesn’t even need to be thought about. Not only that, but even if they were picked up, they’d only ever be picked up after coasting through space for millions, possibly tends of millions of years, and in turn it will take hundred of thousands of years for them to make their way here (assuming they have highly relativistic propulsion systems). So... no.