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Voyager as Technosignature
- ok_dad 4y agoI'm sad that we overlooked putting a description of our tools onto our tools! Tools are one of the things we look for in archealogical surveys, and sometimes it's hard to tell what they were for. It would be nice, if we ever found a space probe, to be able to reference some data that told us what the probe was for and not just where it came from.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> we overlooked putting a description of our tools onto our tools Voyager is a tool. Its function should be discernible from its form.
- anigbrowl 4y agoIt seems like including a copy of the specifications would help anyone who discovered it to get up to speed on the language that much more rapidly, assuming they wanted to respond in some fashion. Of course, we're biased toward imagining space aliens are awash is amazing technology, whereas it's equally likely that Voyager might be intercepted many thousands of years from now by some species with very limited spacefaring capability. That said, the golden records included with both Voyager probes contain a relatively dataset for hypothetical space archaeologists to work with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record
- svachalek 4y agoI think any civilization capable of capturing and analyzing this 1970s tech would find it pretty trivial. Granted they're going to have a totally alien mindset but they're going to be a spacefaring people which should give us some things in common. And they managed to find this one special piece of space dust in the first place. When 'Oumuamua came through our system all we could do is speculate about it from a distance, and we'd have to be much, much more advanced than we are for that to change. Although, possibly we could find remnants of alien tech as wreckage on the Moon and similar places.
- midoridensha 4y ago>I think any civilization capable of capturing and analyzing this 1970s tech would find it pretty trivial. Maybe, maybe not. You're making a lot of assumptions. Spacefaring aliens might have very primitive technologies in some sectors. Earth could be invaded, for instance, by spacefaring aliens with weapons technology similar to that from sailing ships of the 1700s (gunpowder-fired cannons): the key to FTL travel might have been a relatively simple part of physics we just somehow overlooked. Aliens might have spacecraft tech that looks like the Apollo technology.
- thereddaikon 4y agoI see someone has read the road not taken.
- cryptonector 4y agohttps://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/706/pioneer-plaque/ https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/706/pioneer-plaque/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque
- phkahler 4y ago>> Voyager 1 is now 24 billion kilometers from home. I wish they would give these distances in light-minutes or even light-hours for Voyager. IIRC it's not quite a light-day.
- dllthomas 4y ago22 hours 14 minutes 15.38 seconds 1334 minutes 22.24 hours 0.9266 days approaching 1337 light-minutes :D
- KineticLensman 4y agoGoogle says 22.2 light hours, so yes, just short of a light day
- actionfromafar 4y agoCan't play Quake.
- dmbche 4y agoFor reference, the dish used on Voyager-1 is 12ft in diameter, and I'm fairly certain that's what's being picked up, it's very impressive, being that absurdly far away.
- icambron 4y agoIt’s a radio telescope; they are detecting Voyager’s radio transmissions
- xattt 4y ago> When the backup thrusters were fired in 2017, the spacecraft had been on their way for forty years. Every time I read about Voyager, it seems there is some new detail that comes out about the level of redundancy that was built into the spacecraft. At this point, I would not be surprised if there was another replica that’s been flying beside the original all this time as yet another redundancy.
- aunty_helen 4y agoYou’re not going to believe this… but https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_2
- xattt 4y agoRelative to the scale of the universe, yes, I guess it is flying beside it.
- waldothedog 4y agoAfter a night of no sleep, I am laughing very hard at this. Thanks for taking the edge off
- pengaru 4y agoOrthogonal: I recently watched the first Star Trek film from 1979 for the first time. If you haven't seen it, and find Voyager interesting (and/or wonder why vger.kernel.org is called that), you owe it to yourself to watch this movie. Even the VFX are surprisingly good for a pre-CG era.
- speed_spread 4y agoI remember seeing it when I was young and being much impressed. I think it planted in me the fear that one of my primitve software creations one day might mutate horribly and come back looking for me. With AI now this doesn't seem so far-fetched.
- blooalien 4y agoJust a little nitpick: Your link to vger.kernel.org leads to an https address, where I was only able to find a website at the http://vger.kernel.org http://vger.kernel.org address. Re; the rest of your comment: 110% agree. Fantastic movie. Must see.
- pengaru 4y ago> Just a little nitpick: Your link to vger.kernel.org leads to an https address, where I was only able to find a website at the http://vger.kernel.org http://vger.kernel.org address. I didn't type a URL; it's just a bare FQDN. Is it a clickable link for you? If so, not by my doing.
- midoridensha 4y agoThat movie was visually impressive, but the plot was a snooze-fest, even by the standards of 1979. The scene of the Enterprise entering the spacecraft was ridiculously long and basically gratuitous. The too-brief depiction of the Klingons, however, was amazing, as was the invention of the Klingon language used by the movie (by Michael Okuda IIRC). If you want to see another pre-CG sci-fi movie with amazing VFX, watch 2001: A Space Odyssey, which came 11 years before ST:TMP. It still holds up today. Even better, it was originally shot on 70mm film, so the image quality is astounding.