Two straightforward Voyager questions
Discussion
If a similar machine to our Voyagers but from some far away civilisation passed between the Earth and the Moon would we detect it?
If/when Voyager makes it to another planet system and passes near a huge planet could it get caught up in its gravity or even in the systems star gravity and just stay there forever going around and around?
If/when Voyager makes it to another planet system and passes near a huge planet could it get caught up in its gravity or even in the systems star gravity and just stay there forever going around and around?
Interesting 
1 - quite unlikely, I'd imagine. They aint very big, so unless it was transmitting something my guess would be that there's very little chance. And even if it were, not much more of a chance.
2 - yes, certainly possible. Or it could just get swung out onto a different path.
1 - quite unlikely, I'd imagine. They aint very big, so unless it was transmitting something my guess would be that there's very little chance. And even if it were, not much more of a chance.
2 - yes, certainly possible. Or it could just get swung out onto a different path.
Eighteeteewhy said:
If/when Voyager makes it to another planet system and passes near a huge planet could it get caught up in its gravity or even in the systems star gravity and just stay there forever going around and around?
I thought everything caught in orbit eventually crashed into the object it is orbiting?Bits in space and all that crap slowing it down.
Eighteeteewhy said:
If a similar machine to our Voyagers but from some far away civilisation passed between the Earth and the Moon would we detect it?
If/when Voyager makes it to another planet system and passes near a huge planet could it get caught up in its gravity or even in the systems star gravity and just stay there forever going around and around?
1)Only if it was transmitting signals we could detect, voyager will take around 70k years to reach the nearest star so will be long dead by then.If/when Voyager makes it to another planet system and passes near a huge planet could it get caught up in its gravity or even in the systems star gravity and just stay there forever going around and around?
2) Unlikely, it could get close enough to have it's trajectory changed but it is travelling at 17km/s so you would need to decelerate the probe in relation to the planets escape velocity in order to achieve orbit.
Jupiters escape velocity is 59 km/s but gravity weakens as you get further from the planet and then we get into angular momentum.
Not a physicist this is just my understanding so I could be completely wrong
Einion Yrth said:
Prof Prolapse said:
I thought everything caught in orbit eventually crashed into the object it is orbiting?
The moon gets further from the Earth at a rate of about 3.75cm per year, so...If I'm satisfying pedantry, the point was more that the balance between gravity and forward momentum cannot be maintained. So there is no "forever" in context.
My maths is shocking, but the last time I checked the furthest out probe was doin 18 kilometres a second, and at that rate I had a rough estimate of about 750 thousand years before it come across anything interesting.
One thing for sure is that little probe will probably outlive humankind, I doubt we will ever catch up with it
One thing for sure is that little probe will probably outlive humankind, I doubt we will ever catch up with it
From wikipedia so im sorry:
The record is constructed of gold-plated copper. The record's cover is aluminum and electroplated upon it is an ultra-pure sample of the isotope uranium-238. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.468 billion years. It is possible (e.g. via mass-spectrometry) that a civilization that encounters the record will be able to use the ratio of remaining uranium to daughter elements to determine the age of the record.
So 750k years is nothing in the grand scheme of things, if this record is found it has over 4 billion years of shelf life.
However, 4 billion years will mean earth will be a melted ball as our sun will of started to die and expand.
I just think it's a wonderful and beautiful thing that we as a species has sent out into space evidence of our existence that might outlast us, it might be there when man has evolved into the next step.
The record is constructed of gold-plated copper. The record's cover is aluminum and electroplated upon it is an ultra-pure sample of the isotope uranium-238. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.468 billion years. It is possible (e.g. via mass-spectrometry) that a civilization that encounters the record will be able to use the ratio of remaining uranium to daughter elements to determine the age of the record.
So 750k years is nothing in the grand scheme of things, if this record is found it has over 4 billion years of shelf life.
However, 4 billion years will mean earth will be a melted ball as our sun will of started to die and expand.
I just think it's a wonderful and beautiful thing that we as a species has sent out into space evidence of our existence that might outlast us, it might be there when man has evolved into the next step.
Caruso said:
1. I think we would detect it. I heard on a Nasa video that they reckon they know about 90% of objects >10cm in near earth orbits.
2. I think it could end up orbiting a star in a highly eliptical orbit. Unlikely to orbit a planet though.
1. There's a world of difference between something in a near-earth orbit and just generally passing through the solar system though! It's like trying to keep track of a post-it note on your desk vs a post-it note somewhere in the country 2. I think it could end up orbiting a star in a highly eliptical orbit. Unlikely to orbit a planet though.
2. My rudimentary physics would agree with you on that one
It's possible - although we probably wouldn't know what it was and would likely be labelled as a near earth asteroid.
Even our own spacecraft are misidentified as near earth asteroids sometimes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(spacecraft)...
Even our own spacecraft are misidentified as near earth asteroids sometimes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(spacecraft)...
While I think it's genuinely exciting that we've sent a man made object on a journey that will probably outlast us and end up with the object being light years away (if it isn't destroyed in the interim) I'd just like to remind you all of this.
"Pathetic earthlings. Hurling your bodies out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the universe, anything at all, you would've hidden from it in terror." - Ming the Merciless
"Pathetic earthlings. Hurling your bodies out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the universe, anything at all, you would've hidden from it in terror." - Ming the Merciless
No-one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space. No-one could have dreamed that we were being scrutinized, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets. And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us…
oooooorrrraahhhhhhhhhh!
;-)
oooooorrrraahhhhhhhhhh!
;-)
ash73 said:
I'm inclined to agree. Including a map showing where we are wasn't very smart, although the chances of it being intercepted are tiny. We should find a way to shield our transmissions from Earth, but nobody will take that seriously until it's too late.
Me too. It's all very well saying that any civilisation that can detect us will either be benevolent or unable to reach us due to the vast distance - but you are betting the existence of the entire human race on those assumptions on the basis of no data whatsoever.Maybe I'm a touch paranoid but I think we'd be safer assuming the worst with the possibility of being pleasantly surprised rather than the rose-tinted-glasses approach.
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