Voyager 1: (almost) never say die
As you read this, the first human-made artifact to enter interstellar space is receding from us at a speed of 10.6 miles per second (50 times the speed of sound at sea-level on Earth). It is currently (the morning of March 16, 2018) about 141 times farther from the Sun than the (average) distance of Earth from the Sun. Impeded only by clouds of gas that are tenuous in our region of the galaxy, it should keep up this rate of speed for millennia. That sounds fast, but at astronomical scales it’s barely crawling—17,500 years to cover one light-year. Since it will probably not completely escape the Sun’s gravity until two light-years out, it won’t “really” exit the Solar System for another 35,000 years or so. For the finer points of what constitutes “interstellar space” check out: https://scitechdaily.com/new-data-confirms-voyager-1-interstellar-space/
(You may not be too surprised, if you went to that link, that the determination of Voyager 1’s official interstellar status depended partly on the readings of the “tsunami waves” that have smacked Voyager three times as a result of Coronal Mass Ejections from the Sun. CMEs are those random ejections of solar plasma that pose a serious threat to our increasingly electrified way of life here on Earth, as discussed in my earlier post https://www.markheinickewrites.com/2017/11/04/uncertainty-part-two-when-comes-the-big-shock/ . )
Continue reading “THE MOST AMAZING YEAR IN SPACE, EVER (2017), PART 5: Voyager 1 Aces Another Test”