Science, what is that all about? Techmology, what's all about? <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Ws6HPTom2AY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
I started a thread on this when Voyager first hit the Heliopause back in 2003 -- It's very hard for me to believe that was a decade ago! It's also hard to imagine the massive distance Voyager has traveled in that 10 year period and it still hasn't officially left the solar system. The article I posted way back in 2003... link
Thanks for posting that, I've always been very interested in Voyager 1 and 2 since I was a kid. They are truly impressive pieces of hardware, they'll still be traveling long after we are all gone.
I wonder if they could make anything that lasted that long these days. Its even more amazing they managed to all this with computers as powerful as a calculator now days.
I know what you mean, for them to have survived as long as they have with tech from the late 70s is incredibly impressive.
The Voyagers use magnetic tape to record things like Pet computer or Commodore computer used cassette tapes back in the 70s.
^ New Horizons has the same secondary mission. Per wiki: New Horizons is designed to fly past one or more Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) after passing Pluto [2015]. Because the flight path is determined by the Pluto flyby, with only minimal hydrazine remaining, objects must be found within a cone, extending from Pluto, of less than a degree's width, within 55 AU. Provided it survives that far out, New Horizons is likely to follow the Voyager probes in exploring the outer heliosphere and mapping the heliosheath and heliopause. Even though it was launched far faster than any outward probe before it, New Horizons will never overtake either Voyager 1 or Voyager 2, as the most distant man-made object from Earth. Close fly-bys of Saturn and Titan gave Voyager 1 an advantage with its extra gravity assist. When New Horizons reaches the distance of 100 AU, it will be travelling at about 13 km/s (29,000 mph), around 4 km/s (8,900 mph) slower than Voyager 1 at that distance.
I highly recommend listening to the Voyager record (most of it is on youtube). The 'sounds of earth part' is absolutely crazy if you listen to it from the point of view of an alien. The greetings are also really interesting. The English greeting was the only one spoken by a child. The music is all over the place, but there were some good choices in there. And who knows what kind of music some alien race will think sounds good? I think Carl Sagan's choice of music was okay. He really wanted to capture as much earth culture as possible. I love NASA.
I always wondered who slipped this crappy sketch on the record -- it has to have been drawn by one of the engineers' kids.
Literal LOL -- some of those pictures are so absurd -- this is what we want our legacy to be for some alien in a billion years... stoners?
^^^ Yeah good question, KingCheetah. NASA intended the following image, but at the last minute, it was switched. There are also rumors that stickers from the Church of the Subgenius were placed on the probe just before launch. If so, that is a kind of vandalism that could have terrible consequences for the entire planet. Not kidding.
I was looking at at some of the images that are on the "golden record" last night and having a good laugh. (Just a note: I mean on a web site, I'm not an alien). Its like a those random CD's you'd get with computers sometimes in the 90's that had a random collection of images, sounds clips and just weird stuff on them. I know they tried to make it so that intelligent life should be able to work out how to read the info on the record and be able to use it, but I couldn't help but think how bloody difficult they actually made it! A few decades on and we could send along something that would require an alien to simply press play (Audio or video) and they would receive really interesting, relevant information about life on Earth. Instead what is out there right now is so cryptic, I just found it funny! :-D The strange one for me was the picture of the highway. It made me think how terrifying it would be for earth to receive an image of an aliens mass transit system.
Nice try alien... i'm guessing you are a Grey -- sneaky and looking for human DNA samples. NOT UNDER MY WATCH
Just step into the probulator already!!! :-D There's an image they sent of a woman breastfeeding. I had to laugh at the thought of some aliens thinking "It seems to have some sort of parasite attached to it!!".
