Now the question is, what time is it in voyager 1? With time dilation, the "now" on Voyager is out of sync with our now. I was watching star wars recently and when Han Solo casually say "we should be in Alderaan at 0200 hours", I paused for a second. What does that even mean [0]? Traveling through space is challenging today, but after we figure that out, we will have to face the problem of time keeping across the galaxy.
Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth
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Re: Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth
#72Wow, this gives a reflection about our future. The nearest potentially habitable planet known is Proxima Centauri b, which orbits the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri about 4 light‑years from Earth (at least it is in a habitable zone of its star) [1]. So we don't have a choice actually except protecting and make sure our planet survives. That's regardless if it really would be able to support life as we know or not (p…
I have an optimistic view that building underground facilities on Mars/Lunar might not be a far-stretched idea. But I have never done any research into the idea so not whether it works or not.
Basically, reducing costs and tech requirements by going underground (since it is underground we do not need to terraform the planet, and it is less likely to leak oxygen to external environment). Digging dirts and stones is a solvable problem. So optimistically I believe this is just an engineering/cost problem.
Re: Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth
#73Wow, this gives a reflection about our future. The nearest potentially habitable planet known is Proxima Centauri b, which orbits the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri about 4 light‑years from Earth (at least it is in a habitable zone of its star) [1]. So we don't have a choice actually except protecting and make sure our planet survives. That's regardless if it really would be able to support life as we know or not (p…
Space is cool, and I support the scientific work some of its pioneers discover. But the category of people who believe space travel is somehow the solution to problems on Earth give me headaches.
Whoever is currently alive won't live to see the absolute worse that earth is going to be in upcoming centuries, if the human civilization even survives until then
Re: Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth
#7450 years for 1 light day... so to arrive Alpha Centauri that is 4.2 light years far away... 76549 years and 364 days :-)
One of the neat things that I've stumbled across is https://thinkzone.wlonk.com/SS/SolarSystemModel.php
Make the model scale to be 10000000 (10 million). The sun is a chunky 139 meters in diameter. Earth is 15 km (9 miles) away. Pluto is 587 km (365 miles) away. The speed of light is 107 kph (67 mph).
Alpha Centauri is 4.1 million km (2.5 million miles) away... that is 10 times the earth moon distance.
Another comparison... Voyager 1 is moving at 30 light minutes per year. (Andromeda galaxy is approaching the Milky Way at 3.2 light hours per year)
Re: Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth
#75Not that we would literally do this with Voyager, but it makes me wonder at the potential utility of a string of probes, one sent every couple of [insert correct time interval, decades, centuries?], to effectively create a communication relay stretching out into deep space somewhere. My understanding with the Voyagers 1 and 2 is (a) they will run out of power before they would ever get far enough to benefit from a re…
Not useful, because the signal are too weak to be picked up probe to probe. On earth, the tiny signal from Voyager at this distance is picked up by dish the size of a football field; same with sending of the signal.
> the tiny signal from Voyager at this distance is picked up by dish the size of a football field
Lots of small fishes can resemble a large fish.
Re: Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth
#76The article points that by 2030, we will lose comms with voyager. Is there a way to avoid it?
Re: Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth
#77Now the question is, what time is it in voyager 1? With time dilation, the "now" on Voyager is out of sync with our now. I was watching star wars recently and when Han Solo casually say "we should be in Alderaan at 0200 hours", I paused for a second. What does that even mean [0]? Traveling through space is challenging today, but after we figure that out, we will have to face the problem of time keeping across the gal…
> With time dilation, the "now" on Voyager is out of sync with our now
A couple minutes [1].
> we will have to face the problem of time keeping across the galaxy
Not really. Barring relativistic travel, it’s not dissimilar from the problem seagoing voyagers faced on long trade routes. Ship time is set based on the convenience of the passengers and the route.
[1] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/56055/if-voyager-1...
Re: Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No, not "About to". It's this time "next year". 48 years in space and a light-day from Earth? I think it qualifies for "about to" :) (At this point 1 year is ~2% of total time in space)
sure - but this time next year is obv more relevant
Christmas also starts earlier every year.
I guess ScienceClock wanted a "first!".
Re: Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my opinion, if we really want a presence off of earth we'd be better off building larger and larger space habitats and bootstrapping a mining industry in space.
> if we really want a presence off of earth we'd be better off building larger and larger space habitats and bootstrapping a mining industry in space This turns entirely on how human biology works in zero versus low gravity. (Same for spin versus natural, or linear, gravity.) The experiments we need to be doing is building and launching space stations and planetary bases for mice.
I can't wait for all the studies making the news that end with "in mice in space"
Re: Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth
#80"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."
This old video is a beautiful and astounding demonstration of just how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big the Universe is, and where in all this endless space our dear favourite little Pale Blue Dot (Earth) resides:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X-3Oq_82XNA
We all Earthlings are extremely lucky to be alive and thriving (or trying to) in such a beautiful bountiful rarest-of-rare ecosystem that somehow survived and thrived despite all the vagaries and vastness of spacetime.