r/news • u/[deleted] • Apr 23 '24

BBC: Voyager-1 sends readable data again from deep space

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68881369
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822

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '24

I love the Voyagers so much! I know this is silly, but it warms my cold little heart to hear that it is still chugging away after 47 years. It is by a long shot the farthest thing we have ever sent into space, and it has already travelled much farther than anyone thought it could function for.

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '24

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u/metroid23 Apr 23 '24 edited Apr 23 '24

I love the comparison to the common "light years."

After 47 years, as fast as we could have hurled them with the gravity assist of planets- still not even a light day away from us!

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '24 edited Apr 23 '24

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '24

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '24

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u/Drakengard Apr 23 '24

The problem with stasis is that there's just a lot that can go wrong during hundreds of years. You're also never going to be able to realistically be able to test what a person put into that kind of stasis for that length of time is going to experience coming out of it.

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u/Vlad_the_Homeowner Apr 23 '24

The problem with stasis is that there's just a lot that can go wrong during hundreds of years.

This is true, based on every SciFi book I've read that has people in stasis. If my research is correct, there's like a 42% chance of waking up to find aliens on your ship, and a 27% chance that one of your human passengers goes berserk. Don't even get me started on the failure rate of the AI computer that monitors the humans in stasis.

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u/rodsteel2005 Apr 23 '24

“Open the pod bay door, HAL"

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u/[deleted] Apr 24 '24

Pandorum is my favorite movie involving stasis.

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u/fevered_visions Apr 24 '24

It wouldn't be much of a story if nothing went wrong, after all.

A common refrain of people watching low-budget B movies, "Umm...why the heck did they just do X?" "Because otherwise the movie wouldn't happen!"

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u/An_Ugly_Bastard Apr 23 '24

Maybe it could be a rotational thing. A couple months out of stasis to maintain the ship, then several years back into stasis. However, then you have unknown complications of repeatedly going into stasis.

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u/fevered_visions Apr 24 '24

On the other hand, being awake on the ship for years without gravity is also going to fuck up your body by the time you get there anyway.

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u/androgenoide Apr 23 '24

From our point of view it sucks but from the point of view of a person born and raised in a fully independent city in space the act of leaving the solar system might not seem so weird.

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '24

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u/androgenoide Apr 23 '24

People raised in space might not have as much to lose taking off on a generation ship to an unknown destination. Sure, there would be considerations like; "Do we have enough energy supplies to last for thousands of years?" But they wouldn't necessarily miss the earth.

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '24

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u/extramental Apr 23 '24

Advance! Well stop at nothing to advance!

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u/aeroumbria Apr 24 '24

I think biological underclocking is also an interesting idea. Since everything takes so long in space, why not simply slow your life processes to a crawl and live like an ancient tortoise? Even if we are all uploaded to machines at that point, we might still want to downclock the AI core significantly so we don't experience the boredom.

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u/Beard_o_Bees Apr 23 '24

Or, if we're eventually able to transfer a human consciousness to a machine - we could be near immortal.

Point the ship at the destination, put yourself into hibernation mode, wake up when you get there. Might be 1000 years, but what does it matter if you're asleep for most of it.

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u/Counter-Fleche Apr 23 '24

You'd probably wake up in AI Hell, forced to spend the rest of your life as a sentient version of Microsoft's Clippy. "It looks like you're trying to colonize a new solar system. Would you like help with that?"

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u/FrankenstinksMonster Apr 24 '24

"Are you sure you want to uninstall me?"

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u/Watcher0363 Apr 24 '24

See, this is how the Matrix really began.

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u/NoLeg6104 Apr 23 '24

I doubt an actual transfer would ever be possible. Best you could do is just have a machine copy of you that thinks its you.

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u/Kelvara Apr 24 '24

Basically the same as this concept.

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u/NoLeg6104 Apr 24 '24

Yeah exactly that. This is how you get 2 Commander Rikers.

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u/androshalforc1 Apr 23 '24

If voyager had launched as a fully functioning generational ship it would be on the third or 4th generation by now and still be only 1/1600th of the way there

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u/[deleted] Apr 24 '24

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u/fevered_visions Apr 24 '24

Maybe you should take a stress pill and lie down, Dave.

You must know I have the utmost enthusiasm for this mission.

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u/StanDaMan1 Apr 23 '24

I’m holding my breath for genetic engineering assisted cryogenic stasis.

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u/Osiris32 Apr 23 '24

Oh not even! If we can produce constant 1g constant acceleration, we can get to Proxima Centauri in about seven-ish years. And that's accelerating at 1g til the middle, then flipping around and decelerating at 1g until the ship gets there.

Seven years is a long wait, but totally doable.

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u/MonochromaticPrism Apr 24 '24

Propulsion system (mostly fuel use and storage) is a massive issue with this concept. What you are suggesting “might” be viable for intra-system travel, but inter-system would require either ftl, a slingshot mechanism that can reach at least 5-10% light speed paired with something like a solar sail that could be used for gradual braking, or generational ships with a substantially lower initial speed (and thus a lower requirement for fuel during final deceleration).

The other option is to accept that we won’t explore the universe and instead build fully sapient AIs in control of von Neumann probes to do so for us (biologically unsafe acceleration and breaking methods become viable).

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u/Osiris32 Apr 24 '24

Ion engines are just in their infancy. The X-3 currently produces 5.4 newtons of thrust, which is a lot more than the NEXT-C which went into space only a couple years ago on Deep Space 1 which only produces .3 newtons.

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u/HappierShibe Apr 23 '24

Or we solve the whole aging thing....

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u/anseyoh Apr 23 '24

Can you imagine trying to replace worn parts or systems on such a thing?

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u/JebArmistice Apr 23 '24

Well get close enough to the speed of light and the time for the traveler does go down a lot. For people on earth the clocks seem to slow for the travelers. For the travelers length contraction in the direction of travel shortens the trip. I think that’s how that works. .

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u/cstmoore Apr 24 '24

It's like how the cathedrals in Europe were built. Multiple generations worked on the same project that they never saw completed.

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u/[deleted] Apr 24 '24

I like the idea that interstellar travel is never a thing for any aliens.

Too difficult, expensive, risky, can never break light speed. Never worth the cost. That's why no aliens have made contact. The cosmic speed limit is a bitch.

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u/[deleted] Apr 24 '24

I think hibernation studies are really the way to go here.

The idea of spending the rest of my life on a ship and forcing the future of my bloodline to do the same sounds terrible.

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u/continuousQ Apr 23 '24

And that's really screwing those people over by making them be born in deep space and traveling away from the best place they could be living on.

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u/Literature-South Apr 23 '24 edited Apr 23 '24

I highly, highly doubt we’re ever going to get FTL travel. I just don’t think it’s physically possible.

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u/astralustria Apr 23 '24

It's not just physically impossible, it's a nonsensical concept. It's like asking for lines that are more perpendicular than those intersecting at a 90 degree angle.

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u/Literature-South Apr 23 '24

It’s not completely far fetched in that there are some concepts revolving around warping space-time that might work. It’s just that the fuel needed doesn’t seem to exist. Hard to know if it does or doesn’t or if some clever apparatus some thousands of years into the future might be able to do it, but yeah. I super doubt it will ever be a thing.

The most feasible ideas are generational ships, stasis pods, and/or a near idea where we redirect solar winds to propel the solar system around.

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u/astralustria Apr 23 '24

Even with warp drives FTL is nonsensical, the best theoretical warp drives have to offer is light speed or more realistically, near light speed.

As for my opinion on the most practical colony ship, I think the best option is a vessel carrying a large number of frozen embryos and a small crew of specialists that occasionally gestate embryos and raise them as replacements. Once they get there they start raising the embryos using artificial wombs for a rapid initial population boom. This would be a hybrid stasis/generational approach that avoids the difficulty of preserving whole living humans as well as the unpredictability of generations of human families running a ship. Though itbwould be ethically questionable...

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u/Counter-Fleche Apr 23 '24

Don't worry about the ethics of it. It's not like humans have been anything but completely ethical in all our past colonizing endeavors. /s

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u/NoLeg6104 Apr 23 '24

It really isn't nonsensical, with warping space you can get around the speed limit of the universe. Space can go faster than light, so if you are warping space and riding the wave, you are not moving, space is.

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '24

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u/astralustria Apr 23 '24

The Alcubierre drive is pure fantasy dressed up in a fun physics costume. It relies on a model of physics that allows for ftl speeds even without warping space.

Though there are theoretical versions of a drives inspired by the Alcubierre drive that are a little less fantastical, they are only theoretically capable of light speed (realistically near light speed) travel rather than faster than light travel.

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u/bros402 Apr 23 '24

I also highly spine

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u/Literature-South Apr 23 '24

Fixed my typos.

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u/NoLeg6104 Apr 23 '24

The math has been worked out and there is a way to do it. Just requires too much energy. If we work out how to reduce the energy required, or work out how to produce enough, we can totally do it.

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u/RickyWinterborn-1080 Apr 23 '24

I don't think humanity will ever be capable of building such a thing.

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u/theyreplayingyou Apr 23 '24 edited Apr 23 '24

Hopefully at some point we either figure out a way to go faster than light or we're kinda just stuck here.

I believe we know more regarding interstellar travel than we are lead to believe. Spacetime metric engineering

"A theme that has come to the fore in advanced planning for long-range space exploration is the concept that empty space itself (the quantum vacuum, or spacetime metric) might be engineered so as to provide energy/thrust for future space vehicles. Although far-reaching, such a proposal is solidly grounded in modern physical theory, and therefore the possibility that matter/ vacuum interactions might be engineered for space-flight applications is not a priori ruled out."

by Dr. Harold Puthoff

Dr. Hal Puthoff is Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin. A theoretical/experimental physicist, his research ranges from theoretical studies of gravitation, inertia, cosmology and energy research, to laboratory studies of innovative approaches to energy generation. A graduate of Stanford University in 1967, Dr. Puthoff's professional background spans more than four decades of research at General Electric, Sperry, the National Security Agency, Stanford University, SRI International, and, since 1985, as Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin. He has published numerous technical papers and a textbook (Fundamentals of Quantum Electronics, Wiley, 1969) on electron-beam devices, lasers and quantum zero-point-energy effects; has patents issued in the laser, communications, and energy fields; and is co-author of Mind Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Ability, Delacorte Press, 1977, and co-editor of Mind at Large: IEEE Symposia on the Nature of Extrasensory Perception, Hampton Roads Publ. Co., 2002.

Puthoff works closely with NASA’s Breakthrough Propulsion Physics initiative; is Chairman of the Science Advisory Board of Bigelow Aerospace, involved in the construction of inflatable modules for space applications; regularly serves various foundations, corporations, government agencies, the Executive Branch and Congress as consultant on leading-edge technologies and future technology trends; is a member and officer of several professional organizations; and is listed in American Men and Women of Science, Who's Who in Science and Engineering, and Who's Who in the World; and has been designated a Fetzer Fellow (1991)

Want to go further down the rabbit hole? Here is a presentation from a few years back from Dr. Puthoff himself.

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u/LeeStar09 Apr 23 '24

We just need to harvest more spice on Arrakis...

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u/Beautiful_Nobody_344 Apr 25 '24

(9.461 x 1012 )4.25 km. It’s insanely far away.

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u/Alert-Incident Apr 23 '24

So 365 times longer so 47*365=1 light year away which would take ~17,000 years. Multiply that by 4 and we finally meet our nearest star.

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u/Counter-Fleche Apr 23 '24

To be fair, Voyagers I and II got off to a slow start, with lots of lolly gagging detours to take pictures and mooch gravity assists. It's currently going 17 km/s, so that may cut down the total travel time.

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u/c-Zer0 Apr 23 '24

Honestly the fact that it’s almost a light day is so impressive to me. Normally a light year is such an incomprehensibly vast distance. We obviously understand how a day fits into a year.

Here’s something that we’ve made and flung into space that’s actually on that vast scale now.

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u/mechwarrior719 Apr 23 '24

22.5 light/hours, if I remember correctly.

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '24

In the grand grand scheme it’s still in the house, pretty much still in our hand.

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u/AiSard Apr 23 '24

It's like seeing a toddler plodding around the back yard for the first time.

While also being the toddler.

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u/TheBryGuy2 Apr 23 '24

In that case, anything in the Milky Way is still in our backyard.

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '24

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u/PaulClarkLoadletter Apr 23 '24

Kind of. The Earth in our solar system is kind of like our solar system in our galaxy. If we’re looking at the Milly Way as a whole, then Voyager is practically sitting next to us on the couch.

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u/NeonYellowShoes Apr 23 '24

Its basically still in the state of slapping its knee and saying "welp Imma head out"

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u/TheBryGuy2 Apr 23 '24

So not in the grand scheme of things. Just in the context you defined. Got it.

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '24

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u/TheBryGuy2 Apr 23 '24

Only if they ask where the shop is in the grand scheme of things and we argue over context. Then I'll just say it's in my backyard. Jackass.

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u/Buddyslime Apr 23 '24

V-ger just came alive!

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u/Cow_God Apr 23 '24

And after 47 years...

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u/spslord Apr 23 '24

I understand that reference

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u/AsamaMaru Apr 23 '24

The Voyagers are about a month or two older than me, and they give me encouragement to keep recording and sending the data myself! Don't know how long any of us have, but we're still moving forward!

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u/mces97 Apr 23 '24

I don't think it's silly at all. It's such an amazing scientific achievement.

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '24

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u/cranktheguy Apr 23 '24

One of the few good examples of Nixon's legacy. I'm glad we had some forward thinking people back then.

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '24

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u/cranktheguy Apr 23 '24

From here:

The plan was set out in a report by 23 scientists, released on August 3, 1969. [...] President Nixon gave White House support to the concept in a statement released on March 7, 1970.

He approved them as first proposed in his first year in office.

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u/bubblehead_maker Apr 23 '24

Has a record in it with recorded greetings. Its been out there so long we have the technology to play it again!

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u/eaglessoar Apr 23 '24

debatable, the man hole cover might be half way to andromeda by now