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Always enjoyed this bit below about Voyager 1 a good reminder of how vast the universe is not too mention just to the oort cloud! "Even though Voyager 1 travel
by boringg 3y ago
Always enjoyed this bit below about Voyager 1 a good reminder of how vast the universe is not too mention just to the oort cloud!
"Even though Voyager 1 travels about a million miles per day, the spacecraft will take about 300 years to reach the inner boundary of the Oort Cloud and probably another 30,000 years to exit the far side."
I have to hope that in the distant future we will hopefully have spaceships that will pass voyager still traveling along in space, doing its thing as a relic to us early space traveling humans.
- whalesalad 3y ago1 million miles per day is an insane figure
- ta8645 3y agoAnd yet it's a vanishingly small distance on the scale of the universe. Mind bending.
- boringg 3y agoExactly - that's the part thats truly amazing. 30000 years to the outside of the oort cloud - thats still in our system (border of it) - not even scratching the universe in the faintest.
- zamfi 3y agoYou do it every day! The Earth itself moves faster than Voyager -- 1.6 million miles per day.
- paxys 3y agoThe tiny difference here is that we made Voyager.
- isolli 3y agoAnother difference is that we sent Voyager traveling orthogonally to Earth's orbit. Well, not exactly, but you get the point... > Voyager 1 is now leaving the solar system, rising above the ecliptic plane at an angle of about 35 degrees at a rate of about 520 million kilometers (about 320 million miles) a year. Voyager 2 is also headed out of the solar system, diving below the ecliptic plane at an angle of about 48 degrees and a rate of about 470 million kilometers (about 290 million miles) a year. https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/frequently-asked-questions/fact-sheet/ https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/frequently-asked-questions/fact...
- whalesalad 3y agoDoesn’t count. Earth has gravity. It’s immense. It has an atmosphere. Voyager is a tiny little man made craft flying out - naked - into the unknown.
- sillywalk 3y agoReminds me of Monty Python's Galaxy Song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Song#Accuracy_of_astronomical_figures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Song#Accuracy_of_astron...
- askvictor 3y agoI memorised that as a youngster, and still use to get ballpark figures of space distances.
- hughesjj 3y agoWow, so the heliopause is inscribed well, well, well within the port cloud? Insane
- ThisIsTheWay 3y agoThis is a helpful image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliosphere#/media/File:PIA17046_-_Voyager_1_Goes_Interstellar.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliosphere#/media/File:PIA170...
- sgt 3y agoPort cloud? I think you've been working in IT for too long.
- slimginz 3y agoProbably just an autocorrect slip
- hughesjj 3y ago^ ...my fingers are fat and 99% of my posts are from a cell phone. I should proof read more but I'm a lazy piece of shit who shits out shit opinions in between compilations/cicd tests, as my comment history can attest to. I should probably be a better netizen, along with many other aspects I should improve on (of which man, I'm trying to improve a bunch, I freely admit I as a human need some work) (Also lol my phone initially auto corrected or more likely my fingers originally typed fat ->far)
- ryanmentor 3y agoThere is at least one star trek episode where this happens :)
- sgt 3y agoMight happen sooner than we think, if we can just jumpstart a proper space program and a space economy. Once we pass Voyager I (and II) in the future we could always retrofit it with a newer form of battery (perhaps one that works indefinitely, based on antimatter).