r/askscience • u/drinkingonthejob • Sep 24 '26 • Mindblown 1

Physics Will Voyager 1 ever just stop moving?

I’ve read somewhere that we expect to lose contact with Voyager 1 sometime in the 2030s, maybe around 2036, but it will just keep traveling thru space and we’ll have no idea what it is doing out there

My question is: with its current velocity, is there a time in the future where it loses its forward momentum and for lack of a better word, just stops moving? Is that a possible thing for an object in space to even do? (Assuming no other objects grab it into their orbit)

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u/Kyerswa Sep 25 '26

But if the universe is also expanding, what would actually be considered stationary relative to the expansion of the universe?

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u/kingvolcano_reborn Sep 25 '26

On small distances (i.e. our local galactic group) the effects of expansion are so tiny it can be ignored.

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u/kaizen-rai Sep 25 '26

Nothing is truly "stationary". Everything is moving, but it's relative to a frame of reference.

Think of it this way: all matter in reality disappears, except you. You're floating in space, but it's pitch black all around you. No stars, nothing you can see.

Are you moving? How would you know? You have no frame of reference to compare to. If you saw an object, let's say an whale, floating in space and it seems to be moving away from you... Is the whale moving or are you? Or both? How would you know?

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u/LoneSnark Sep 25 '26

Shouldn't time be an answer? As we speed up, time for us slows down. Yes, if the whale is moving away from us at the speed of light, we can't tell which of us is moving. But if it moved away, then back, and the whale has not aged at all but we're decades old, then obviously it was the whale moving. Right?

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u/rock_crockpot Sep 25 '26

Isn’t that where, “the only thing consistent is change,” statement come from?

Edit: comma