Voyager 1 left earth 33 years ago. It is just NOW about to achieve a milestone in human exploration - interstellar travel.

The craft is moving at 38,000 mph so in 68,000 years, it could be approaching the nearest star to us - Proxima Centauri (it won't because it's not going quite in that direction, but it COULD.)

Read the latest news about Voyager 1, the probe that was launched when I was a Junior in high school.

"When Voyager was launched, the space age itself was only 20 years old, so there was no basis to know that spacecraft could last so long," he told BBC News.
"We had no idea how far we would have to travel to get outside the Solar System. We now know that in roughly five years, we should be outside for the first time."

 

Here's my question: how do scientists KNOW the distances with any reasonable precision?

For instance... Sonar works based on a frequency sent and received. Knowing the speed of the frequency, and dividing the time it takes to travel by two (signal down TO object + signal back FROM object = total elapsed time, divide by two to calculate distance TO object) you can have a reasonably accurate gauge of distance/depth.

Since laser/light range finding works in a very similar fashion (only a beam instead of a sound wave), how can scientists say something is 'millions' of light years away if the technology used to produce the laser isn't even a hundred years old? Based on that, if a celestial object was a million light years away, it would take 2 million years for the beam to hit the object and reflect back, correct? Meaning, in order for anyone to ACCURATELY prospect that the object is a million light years away, a caveman would have had to launch the laser. This is also assuming the caveman could aim the laser accurately enough to hit a star that far away. 1° of deviance in accuracy of the beam means your beam is millions of miles off-target.

Seems like 'space' is all one big guess.

And if the Voyager still has enough power to transmit a signal billions of miles away after 33 years, what kind of power source is in that thing, and WHY are we still using AA batteries in our remotes that go dead every year?

Snacks for thought....

 

Whoops, been to Alpha Centauri. The closest star to our sun. Boundary dispute with Proxima involving .4 parsec. Very warm there unlike here and no snow. Gary

 

It was my understanding that Voyager had a big ball of string attached to its tail and the string was marked at every one thousand miles.
But this is more like how it's done. But I think the string idea is easier.
Distance To Stars

 

It's done the same way George Washigton surveyed the property lines of Virginia. By geometric triangulation.

Your remote would need to be outside receiving solar energy to do what the voyager has done. Now think about it, how many people have you seen doing something healthy and useful outside with a TV remote in their hand.

 

Interesting, makes much more sense. But as he said, still a guess.

 

powered by nukes....and it's all mathmatical...

 

I'd like to know how to achieve 38,000 mph?

 

Now that is funny....definitely a different take on the string theory than I've heard before.

 

 

Its all down hill

 

What's more important that I want to know is ..... if I'm driving the xFire at the speed of light, and I turned on the headlights ...... Would they do any good? Just askin ......

 

Interesting thought, and totally makes my head hurt.

Kinda like if a fly is inside the cabin of an airliner, and is flying towards the front, then technically he's flying faster than the airplane (relative to the ground), even though he's only flying at 3mph in a pressurized cabin.