Voyager 1 and 2 still alive!!!! 38,000 mph!

[Captainfury]

Yes, I agree that its going to be almost impossible to meet or communicate with any potential technological civilisation, with the timescale overlap problems, distances between star systems being so utterly enormous, difficulties in understanding how life can originate on lifeless planets, and on and on and on the list of difficult hurdles continues. To those people at places like SETI, I applaud for trying and not giving up hope.
(By the way, Voyager exited the Solar system recently, not the Milky Way galaxy, but thats just wording).
ThankYou for the information and links about Artemis, and NASA's return journeys to the moon. In an alternative realiry, I would have loved to have worked as a scientist or engineer at NASA, but it wasnt to be.
Have a great day my friend, great to chat with like minded MOPAR lovers on this forum.
I live in Sydney, Australia, and have restored/ continue to perfect back to factory a 1972 Fury Gran Sedan, and a 1971 New Yorker.
Both cars have given me so much joy and have improved significantly the friendship and bond between my son and I, that I cant thank Ma Mopar enough. We both enjoy all things with an internal combustion engine, and he is enjoying driving the Fury on the open road, now that the registration has been completed and shes legal once again!
Best wishes.
Kirk

V'Gers coming up on a milestone. the only things a light-day (16 billion miles) away. only took nearly 50 years. On November 13, 2026, A Human-Made Object Will Reach One Light-Day From The Earth . On November 13, 2026, A Human-Made Object Will Reach One Light-Day From The Earth For The First Time In History

even all the planets and with fictional warp drive, Star Trek takes place 300 years from mow and only in this galaxy (assumed). they have episodes about reaching a energy barrier at the galaxy's "edge". The Voyagers have proven the scy-fy to be wrong. they went past edge of Milky Way last year. No barrier.

hence my conundrum. As much as raw math/ statistics say otherwise, i conclude we may be alone in the Universe. Space is big and even with sci-fi propulsion not yet possible, we cant even leave this galaxy in less than 40 years at 38,000 mph - just one of trillions of galaxies. stuff is too far apart and we cant go fast enough and dont live long enough. not to mention we cant protect ourselves from interstellar radiation that unravels biological dna.

maybe all the pitfalls have a technical solution(s). maybe there are "people" who solved all that, but because the universe is also so old and dangerous (stuff blowing up or crashing into each other, etc.,) those "people" are gone. just as we will naturally be in time as you note. granted, absent a catastrophe we caused, the sun will run its life,-cycle and do its thing and in its death throes incinerate the earth. whoever is still here (maybe billions of us) will surely die. especially bad if we are truly unique (sending V'gers, making telescopes, broadcasting EM signals at light-speed for decades, etc.,) as well.

All that potential going wrong, those risk numbers suggest we'll never run into (meet) any living things with our remarkable V'Gers or Jim Webbs. i hope we do. But its likely to take thousands of years and no matter what i aint gonna live long enough to find out.

 

[amazinblue82]

Yes, I agree that its going to be almost impossible to meet or communicate with any potential technological civilisation, with the timescale overlap problems, distances between star systems being so utterly enormous, difficulties in understanding how life can originate on lifeless planets, and on and on and on the list of difficult hurdles continues. To those people at places like SETI, I applaud for trying and not giving up hope.
(By the way, Voyager exited the Solar system recently, not the Milky Way galaxy, but thats just wording).
ThankYou for the information and links about Artemis, and NASA's return journeys to the moon. In an alternative realiry, I would have loved to have worked as a scientist or engineer at NASA, but it wasnt to be.
Have a great day my friend, great to chat with like minded MOPAR lovers on this forum.
I live in Sydney, Australia, and have restored/ continue to perfect back to factory a 1972 Fury Gran Sedan, and a 1971 New Yorker.
Both cars have given me so much joy and have improved significantly the friendship and bond between my son and I, that I cant thank Ma Mopar enough. We both enjoy all things with an internal combustion engine, and he is enjoying driving the Fury on the open road, now that the registration has been completed and shes legal once again!
Best wishes.
Kirk

nice cars.

yes youre right. V'gers will be at it a lot longer to exit Milky Way. that said i still dont believe in the energy barrier at the edge. Wtf would cause that? Makes good sci-fi drama. The milky way is 100,000 ly wide and solar system is about halfway ( or 25,000 ly) from the center length wise.. . a little less if we go "north" through width of disk (milky way is a flattish disc with a thicker bulge in the center where a black hole resides)

Maybe the center (probably something funky is going on there related to Sagittarius A black hole), but i doubt that too. a light-day? well that will happen eventually,and inevitably but historically with no commotion, (next star from sun , proxima centauri is mor years away) but they both will for millions of years probably feel Milky Way's gravity. they are going way too slow. not nearly enough Delta v. so technically still in the galaxy). 4 LY to the next star and 4.5 million to Andromeda at 38,000 nph. My great, great, great, greats (not enough greats but i hope you get the picture) can hopefully hear all about it when I long turned to space dust.



Star Wars allegedly takes place in another galaxy far, far away. those fictional characters could be living in the part of the Universe we cant see . Worse yet, maybe their major sun wen't supernovae. maybe Chewbacca's whole race died a billion year ago a trillion miles away.

i wanted to be a top gun (likely a technical degree of some sort too) but that wasn't cool in the early 70's. Plus i am terribly nearsighted. that said, as i near the end of a business career, i can still dream/read about the path i never took.

good luck with those Mopars. i got daughters. They grew up with/know/like my stuff but they're (the cars) are all too big. C's definitely out, smallest i got is F's and even those are huge vs. my oldest's Toyota. lotta girls are car "guys" but not my two.

 

[amazinblue82]

think were sitting still? All stuff most of us know. 1 minute:23 second video for s**** & giggles.

 

[amazinblue82]

get your nerd hat on if this stuff excites you. i'll leave the study to you.

"Cloud 9" is the colloquial name for something space kids found that was only theorized. 14 million LY away, its a mass of hydrogen that did not form stars. 10,000 LY accross, "dark mattter" provided the gravity, estimated to have a million solar masses worth of hydrogen that never started fusion, so no stars. Such things were predicted but never seen. Chinese found it, Hubble confirmed it, spacekids going nuts. Appparently, a failed galaxy not massive enough to have the hydrogen ignite by fusion, so no stars, no planets, no life as we know it. We see it 14 million years ago so it maybe still be empty of stars today. Or, its still exactly as it appears. any event, its first one we found..ever.

NASA announces new space object: NASA discovers new starless, dark-matter astronomical object dubbed 'Cloud-9' in space,
Hubble telescope discovers 'Cloud-9,' a dark and rare 'failed galaxy' that's unlike anything seen before | Live Science Hubble telescope discovers 'Cloud-9,' a dark and rare 'failed galaxy' that's unlike anything seen before

You can veg out at the links if interested(or the many other links out there) . Fascinating.

 

[3175375]

NASA has once again reminded us why the Voyager missions remain one of humanity's boldest triumphs: even after nearly 50 years in the void, Voyager 2 is still beaming back data that's forcing scientists to rethink the edge of our solar system — and it's far wilder than anyone predicted.Launched in 1977, Voyager 2 crossed into interstellar space in November 2018, becoming only the second human-made object (after its twin Voyager 1 in 2012) to escape the Sun's heliosphere — that vast bubble of solar wind and magnetic fields shielding our planetary neighborhood. What it found there wasn't just "more of the same." Recent analyses of its readings, including ongoing magnetic field and plasma wave data, have spotlighted a scorching "wall" of plasma at the heliopause boundary, with temperatures soaring to 30,000–50,000 Kelvin (that's up to around 90,000°F — hotter than the surface of many stars, yet in a thin, sparse layer).This blazing-hot transition zone arises where the slowing solar wind slams into the denser, colder interstellar medium, creating compression and heating that defies earlier models. Even more puzzling: the magnetic field lines just inside and outside the heliopause align almost perfectly — no sharp flip in direction as theory long predicted. Voyager 2 confirmed what Voyager 1 first hinted at, suggesting hidden processes (perhaps interstellar pressure or flux tubes) are shaping the boundary in unexpected ways.These aren't dusty old archives — Voyager 2's surviving instruments (magnetic field, plasma waves, and soon-to-be-shut-down others) continue feeding fresh insights into particle densities, cosmic ray behavior, and how interstellar plasma interacts with our Sun's domain. In 2025, NASA even powered down select instruments (like the low-energy charged particle detector) to squeeze out extra years of operation into 2026 and beyond, prioritizing the ones probing this frontier.The stakes? Huge. These revelations challenge core assumptions about:How the heliosphere breathes and distorts under interstellar "weather"
The flow and pressure of cosmic particles that bombard everything beyond our protective bubble
Broader astrophysics, from star formation to how galactic magnetic fields influence entire star systems

No "declassified bombshell" has suddenly rewritten the textbooks overnight — much of this builds on data Voyager 2 has been quietly accumulating since crossing the line. But the persistence is staggering: a 1970s spacecraft, now over 140 AU away (about 21 billion km), still whispering secrets from a realm no other probe has touched.Voyager 2 isn't just surviving — it's thriving as a cosmic sentinel, proving that bold engineering and relentless curiosity can keep unlocking the universe's strangest corners long after we thought the hardware would fail. The deep space story isn't over; it's evolving, one faint signal at a time.Our journey into the cosmos? Still only beginning.

 

[amazinblue82]

i didnt know this but i guess im not surprised. i vociferously debate with the trekkies in my circle that like the edge of the galaxy. there is no energy barrier. 20 billion miles away, our plucky little machine finds evidence "not so fast".

im like the urban legend oh the patent commissioner who in 1899 allegedly mused we should close the patent office because "everything had been invented already". a million novel ideas later, that has proven to be wrong.

i must admit i am unequipped to know everything "cosmic" nut what i do know tells me nothing is going on at the edges of solar systems or galaxies. the fact that V'ger is onto something is fascinating. took us 50 years to get that far away and really find out. too bad our mortality and ignorance right now would suggest we'll never get there in 500 lifetimes.

Should we stop asking questions, seeking new data, because nobody alive for next thousands of years is likely to benefit? tell that to Einstein only 100 years ago on we wouldnt have microprocessors (computers & cell phones)or GPS. as long as there are "why's" there will things we learn we didn't previously know. - especially stuff we don't know we don't know.

Universe is big, old, and and vast. and were babies, barely pimples on an elephant's a**. curios meat sacks. despite our insignificance, we still have 10,000 lifetimes of "why's" and maybe we'll discover warp drive, solve word hunger, or cure cancer through V'gers study of the heliopause - send some guy/gals out there and get them back before we/ they die.

EOD, I'D love to know whats going on at the edges. we (i) think "nothing " but maybe that's wrong. and that's likely good. we'll learn something new. maybe spacetime, dark matter, and geometry will solve this rock's energy challenges in my kids lifetime. a machine the size of a shoebox that can power NYC for 100 years.

thanks for the V' Ger heads up & sorry for the mini-rant.