Voyager 1 is Preparing to leave for good

[JesseCuster]

It really gives you an idea of the utter vastness of space that the furthest man made object from Earth is travelling at just under a million miles per day, took over 30 years to reach the edge of our solar system (depending on how you define where the solar system ends), and if it were travelling towards the closest star to the sun, would still take another 70,000 years to get there.

That's just to get to the closest star to our solar system. 70,000 years at 900,000 miles per day!

Space is staggeringly, unimaginably big.

Edited December 21, 2011 by Archimedes

[ShadowSot]

Space is staggeringly, unimaginably big.

That's a good a point as any to post this:

http://blogs.discovery.com/.a/6a00d8341bf67c53ef0148c72b3cbd970c-800wi

The picture, for those who have poor connections.

[JesseCuster]

That's some genuine wisdom for the ages right there.

Interesting that Carl Sagan should pop up in a slight derail about the vastness of space in this discussion as he was one of the scientists who helped design the golden disc about the Voyager 1 spacecraft, that should it be discovered by ET life, will potentially provide them with some information of where Voyager 1 came from.

[ShadowSot]

Yep, s'part of the reason I posted the vid. One of the professors at the local college and a member of the Astronomy Club I go to worked with Sagan on the Voyager mission.