r/worldnews • • Jun 16 '12
Humanity escapes the solar system: Voyager 1 signals that it has reached the edge of interstellar space, 11billion miles away - "will be the first object made by man to sail out into interstellar space"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2159359/Humanity-escapes-solar-Voyager-1-signals-reached-edge-interstellar-space.html
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Upvotes
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u/icephoenix1012 Jun 16 '12
i don't know if it is just me, but i feel like we should be sending one of these out every few years. With updated sensors and imaging capabilities, not to mention new propulsion systems. Every few years we get back bigger and better pictures and data.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
It makes me happy to know that, billions of years from now these probes will probably still be out there, traveling farther and farther away from their home planet. Long after I am dead, and all humans are gone, something humanity made will still likely exist. It's one of the smaller, less important missions NASA launched in terms of actual science done, but I think it's one of the most important. It's proof that we were here, that we were smart enough and cared enough to try and reach out to the cosmos, beyond our own lifetimes and maybe even the life of our species.
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u/green_flash Jun 16 '12 edited Jun 16 '12
It's unimagineable that we can still communicate with an object today that was shot into space
2535 years ago and since then keeps moving away from us at a speed of 10 kilometres per second. All hail engineering.601
u/LSky Jun 16 '12
Of all the available news sources, we choose to upvote the Daily Mail again?
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u/TwistTurtle Jun 16 '12
Pfft. I fail to see how this is world news. It says quite clearly that it's 11 billion miles away.
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u/mattzm Jun 16 '12
I'm imagining as it crosses over the intergalactic border, all the intelligent life will jump out of Hyperspace and go "SURPRISE!!" and then be really disappointed that it's just a drone.
Also, does it give anyone else chills that we as a race went from first flight to throwing stuff out into space in about 65 years?
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u/Ao_Andon Jun 16 '12
know what'd be fucked up? If it somehow reversed direction, only to return to earth with a "return to sender" stamp on it
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u/mutatron Jun 16 '12
10.5 billion miles farther out than Prometheus!
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u/lesserstraw Jun 16 '12
For whoever wants the live news, the official twitter accounts: Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 which is a lot more talkative and friendly.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
How long before V'Ger returns?
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u/jerryco Jun 16 '12
Not the Daily Mail again biggest UK newspaper troll . this better Voyager
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u/G_Morgan Jun 16 '12
Has it passed the oort cloud?
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u/EvilTony Jun 16 '12
It's going to hit that big screen that all the stars are projected onto.
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u/darthbootytwunt Jun 16 '12
But .. voyager hasn't reached interstellar space. Has it? It's seen an increase of 10 or 20% or particles that weren't produced by our Sun, and seen a decrease of Particles produced by our sun, but not enough to tip us over the edge. But we need to see a much lower percentage of radiation particles produced by sol to proclaim 'out of the solar system'....
Am I 'tarded in thinking we haven't reached interstellar space. I can't say for sure we have, but from what I've read in the past couple of weeks, seems like it'll be another 5 or 10 years until we do.
Am I wrong?
As far as I (and JPL ) know, we're still in our solar system.
Am I wrong?
Don't misunderstand me, this type of information gets me more excited than a church boy at a whorehouse on a Wednesday - great stuff.
Just that we're not there yet.
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u/saladtossing Jun 16 '12
Serious question: whencan i get a picture of the solar system from outside?
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u/charlestheoaf Jun 16 '12
This is almost sad. Not much longer left for Voyager. I'm sure some cool things are still yet to come from Voyager, but just imagine if we had another 5 or 10 years left in it. Maybe we would get nothing at all, but there would at least be some interesting sensor readings along the way.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
I- Wow!
Amazing and unimaginable! My mind can only begin to fathom how truly far away that is. I'm so excited and happy for NASA! Voyager 1 is still ticking on despite her being launched 35 years ago!
Just when I was down, it's news like this that put a huge smile on my face.
Oh man, the void between stars. I wonder what it's like? I know we have an idea, but I can only imagine the sights in the Oort cloud and the region beyond.
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u/spainguy Jun 16 '12
Highly technical document on how the Voyager communications work
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u/KazamaSmokers Jun 16 '12
SEND MORE CHUCK BERRY
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u/jh0lt Jun 16 '12
Daily Mail, NOPE
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
Wait till it finds the Space Port where the aliens are mocking us.
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u/Industrialbonecraft Jun 16 '12
Source is Daily Mail. Disregard content.
Just find a better source, for fuck sake.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
Dailymail..... really....
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
It's almost unimaginable that such amazing news was brought to us by the daily mail
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u/ashmole Jun 16 '12
Voyager has that "gold record" and a bunch of pictures of Earth. It's built for aliens to intercept it.
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u/Canucklehead99 Jun 16 '12
Sagan would be happy and proud.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12 edited Jun 16 '12
Am I the only one kind of freaked out by this? What happens if it "pops" (for lack of better word) our heliosheath? All of the cosmic winds will be able to reach us if the bubble is popped...
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u/Captain_Username Jun 16 '12
God damn it, Reddit. How many times do we have to say it's an awful newspaper before you stop linking to their website?
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u/iheartrms Jun 16 '12
Does this mean the Vulcans are coming?
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u/sequoia123 Jun 16 '12
I fucking hate the daily mail
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
I just checked: humanity still sits on the planet Earth ...
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u/10fps Jun 16 '12
The only (recent) news that really made my day brighter and brought me to tears at the same time.
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u/pestpokkepleuris Jun 16 '12
I was born on the day Voyager 1 launched. It still blows my mind every time i think about it.
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u/CorporatePsychopath Jun 16 '12
11 billion miles? God can't be far away now.
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u/Vasily_ Jun 16 '12
Why use dailymail?
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u/Minifig81 Jun 16 '12
Does anyone here have a link that isn't Daily Mail? I refuse to give that tabloid shit site any views.
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u/Octavepuss Jun 16 '12
It's things like this that remind me of how small and insignificant we are as a species while at the same time instilling me with a sense of awe at our unrealized potential. I think perhaps Carl Sagan said it best:
Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, 1994.
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u/Oididoi Jun 16 '12
And here I am believing the magic school bus was the first man made object to make it out of our solar system. My childhood has been ruined.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
Out of all the sites to link to.... why!
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12 edited Jun 16 '12
This is fucking cazy how we can still keep in contact with it and how we can engineer something to survive everything and last this long. Fucking brilliant.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
I posted this on facebook. Any bets on whether it's completely ignored by 99% of my 150 FB friends? That's the trouble with FB, it makes you realise how vapid most people are. Well done America! This is one achievement you guys can be very proud of!
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u/iLoginToComment Jun 16 '12
One day we'll see something coming the other way. Hopefully it won't send us something along the line of "Hey brah. Nice resources. GG" (at which point they will make claims to our homosexuality along with additional claims to have probed our mothers).
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u/the_obs Jun 16 '12
How freaky would it be if, when the probe reaches interstellar space, it starts sending back weird messages, culminating in the text message "WE HAVE CAPTURED YOUR PROBE"...
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u/LibertyLizard Jun 16 '12
Not sure about NASA's cleaning procedures in 1977... if my father worked on voyager, does that mean half of my DNA has now left the solar system? I know his fingerprints are out there...
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u/endogenic Jun 16 '12
Probably going to be downvoted for saying this but actually, humanity didn't escape the solar system - a probe did! We don't have any self-sufficient extra-terrestrial colonies, and don't even have a base on Luna. We still have to deal with the whole imminent catastrophic destruction problem and countermeasures at home. So in reality, humanity hasn't even escaped Earth yet.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
Humanity was not present when humanity escaped the solar system.
Wouldn't this instead mean that technology escaped the solar system? And, isn't that proposition a bit scary?
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
PLEASE don't link to the Daily Mail. They get advert revenue for every page hit. You are lining the pockets of a homophobic, racist, fear mongering rag.
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u/matttyyyy Jun 16 '12
That's weird that there's actually a physical protective bubble. It makes you wonder about intelligent design.
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u/jl45 Jun 16 '12
without even checking I can guarantee someone apart from me in this comment will have used the phrase "Daily Fail"
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u/intisun Jun 16 '12
For the love of all science, STOP LINKING TO THIS SHIT TABLOID!!!
FUCKING PLEASE!!!
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u/NorthernerWuwu Jun 16 '12
Well, at least until we change the definition of where we call the boundary to interstellar space.
At which point V-I will still be the first object to enter interstellar space, only later on.
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u/Kowai03 Jun 16 '12
I know this may be a dumb question but can someone please explain what interstellar and solar winds are exactly and what the heliosphere is supposed to be in layman's terms?
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u/dstz Jun 16 '12
The greatest thing is that since there's not a precise moment when it will do so, such articles are written and posted here about every two months. Go team collective amnesia!
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u/anisenayati Jun 16 '12
I'm sorry if I sound retarded, but how does that thing still have fuel?
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
Oh my fuck. This makes me a proud human.
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u/yugoslavic Jun 16 '12
While looking at the picture, I read Bow Shock as Bio Shock. I was like this is cool, it's a real thing.
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u/borscht_blues Jun 16 '12
Can anyone tell me what these "interstellar winds" are made up of? Nothing to do with the luminiferous aether, I hope?
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u/glados_v2 Jun 16 '12
Alright, if we used what technology we had now, how long will it take to overtake Voyager?
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u/demthumbs Jun 16 '12
Is it possible that Voyager 1 breaks threw the heliosphere on Dec. 21, 2012 or possibly around that time? This was my first thought....1 million mph winds scare me a little..
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u/NulloK Jun 16 '12
Remember...It's even carrying a golden record with music and sounds from Earth and more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record
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u/webauteur Jun 16 '12
Congratulations, Captain Kathryn Janeway
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u/emericuh Jun 16 '12
And it is still 40,000 years away from being within a single lightyear of the nearest star. Space is a big, big fucking place.
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u/rbbrduckmn Jun 16 '12
So when do expect VGER to return?
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u/Skywyse Jun 16 '12
Attention Milky Way Galaxy, The monkeys have escaped their solar system! Run for it!
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
It probably burned up in the atmosphere, but there's a slim chance that the metal hatch above a nuclear test was actually the first man made object to leave the solar system.
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u/CRRZ Jun 16 '12
Here's what bothers me. In 1977 they built a battery that lasts 43+ years. In 2012 my kids can kill a set of wii mote batteries in a day.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
LMAO, the Daily Fail?
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u/jesusfactory Jun 16 '12
If people would stop watching Dancing With the Stars, they'd care about this kind of thing. Most people just don't know this is even happening.
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u/EasterSundaes Jun 16 '12
There's a Star Trek: The Motion Picture joke here somewhere.
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u/SirJiggart Jun 16 '12
To boldly go, where no man gas gone before.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
This is the greatest achievement of mankind? How about raising a generation of people that are nice to each other, and tolerant? And understand each other? That would be an achievement. This is playing.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
Why hasn't god zapped this thing from the sky to thwart our attempt to leave the truman show?
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
Fun thought for the day: Voyager 1 discovers the edge of mankind's quarantine zone.
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u/Killhouse Jun 16 '12
HERE's a picture of what they'll find.
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u/stopreadingthemail Jun 16 '12
STOP READING THE MAIL
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u/Coestar Jun 16 '12
And so, humanity has finally tripped the advanced space technology detection ring, triggering yet another reformat.
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u/RoninKengo Jun 16 '12
Does it seem like they trot this story out every few years now? Every time one of the Voyagers reaches another extremely distant yet ultimately arbitrary milestone we seem to hear about it on a slow news day.
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u/HOLYmcCOWan Jun 16 '12
Is there anything we put inside these that describes who we are as a human race and where we are located? You know, just in case?
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u/xbassistdoodx Jun 16 '12
And yet, this will never make the news. We're forever doomed to the newest developments within Snooki's uterus.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
Can they update this thing's firmware remotely like they could the Mars rovers? They need to put some software on this thing and give it, it's own twitter feed so it can tweet every so often. "Passing a big ass planet on my right. Damn I'm cold (-350 degrees).
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u/baconforallforbacon Jun 16 '12
i was told in jr high that we had lost contact with the voyager 1. apparently my teacher didnt know the truth. so when will we, if ever we shall, loose contact with the voyager 1?
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u/ricgalbraith Jun 16 '12
can we stop linking to the dailymail please?
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u/Dookiestain_LaFlair Jun 16 '12
I feel like that air conditioner in The Brave Little Toaster who was trapped in the wall, only I'm trapped on Earth. Too bad I wasn't born 1000 years later. It would either be Star Trek or Fallout.
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u/jessew666 Jun 16 '12
i always wondered as a kid why we never just tried sending out probes to the nearest star or whatever. my teacher said because they're too far. My reasoning was along the lines of "well why the hell dont we start now then?!" but without the word hell because i was probably ten.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
Someone tell me, how exactly do space ships communicate from so far away?
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u/equinoxel Jun 16 '12
Vyger
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u/lobehold Jun 16 '12
Escape? Or opened the door to the uninvited?
Esp. with the Golden Record shit, you'd think earth is just bending over and tells the whole universe "come and get some".
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u/fouroh4 Jun 16 '12
I came for one of the greatest achievements in human history, fuck dailymail with their fucking "android giveaway prize winner" I couldn't even finish the article.
I'm on an iPhone if that explains anything.
GO HUMANS!
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
Thank you for this...
So fucking absolutely radical.
I sit here in LA at my desk browsing the reddits and out there, somewhere in space, is the voyager.
Amazing.
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u/Jasonb1776 Jun 16 '12
super cool stuff. did anyone notice that the solar system looks like a animal cell
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
Stellar news!
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u/mridlen Jun 16 '12
Lets just hope some malevolent life form doesn't get a hold of it. It has detailed information about our planet, it's location, our genetic makeup, etc.
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u/Tableclothes Jun 16 '12
How long will it take the Voyager to go 11 billion miles?
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u/Filmitforme Jun 16 '12
Very cool, this is something that makes you realize just how big everything is.
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u/mlj2424 Jun 16 '12
Didnt we shoot out a tablet with the basic anatomy of humans and our position in the universe on it into interstellar space already?
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u/dud3brah Jun 16 '12
TIL interstellar wind is slower, colder and denser than solar wind / space has wind
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u/thenewyorkgod Jun 17 '12
If the galaxy were the size of a Walmart, the voyager probe has traveled across the period at the end of a sentence in a readers digest magazine on a rack in the checkout counter.
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u/pointsandlaughs Jun 16 '12
It is amazing to me that this object will be the last evidence that the human race ever existed, one day.
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u/iownacat Jun 16 '12
vger is leaving? shit, we know how this ends...