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Next year in November, the Voyager 1 spacecraft will be ONE full light day away from the Earth!

Launched in 1977, it took almost 50 Earth years to reach "just" distance of 1 light day

Space is so big and we are so tiny :blobcatgiggle:

in reply to stux⚡

yeah. It’s like that Douglas Adams quote: “ Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
in reply to stux⚡

It's amazing how much distance there is between objects in space. I have to think of it in graduated steps: between us and the other planets, between our solar system and other stars, between our solar system and other galaxies. It's amazing how long it takes for our galaxy to make a single rotation.
in reply to Kim Possible

@kimlockhartga it always amazes me just how far away things are, even the moon is not exactly close and when you start looking at places like Neptune the distances are just vast
in reply to Kim Possible

@kimlockhartga
Not to mention (and this is what always stops me in my tracks) we aren't at a standstill...all moving along, dragged behind a sun that is on it's own spiraling path, in an arm of a galaxy that is also moving through space.
in reply to Wm.son

@Sfwmson @kimlockhartga Awesome huh!

Nothing is "still" 😀 It was such a revelation for me that the speed of light in a vacuum is one of the few constants we have :amaze:

in reply to stux⚡

@Sfwmson I still don't understand why we can never go faster than the speed of light, but I think it involves the laws of physics. Like, even if we sent robots, it can't happen.
in reply to stux⚡

It's a great big universe, and we're all really puny. We're just tiny little specks about the size of Mickey Rooney.
youtu.be/xTIR1B7fRLk
in reply to stux⚡

long live to voyagers :)
Incredible times when we did really good stuff without AI crap, etc.
since 70's that we stop in time and become bubblefied ...
in reply to stux⚡

Truly remarkable. Impossible to imagine. Looking back at all the sci-fi I’ve read, every one had to come up with some ‘magic’ to get around how immense space is.

"Launched in 1977, it took almost 50 Earth years to reach "just" distance of 1 light day"

in reply to stux⚡

For more updates on where Voyager 1 is, see @Voyager1.

(I don't see the recent toots from that account's profile; it is part of masto-fu I don't understand)

in reply to Marcus

@puzzled It's because the server botsinspace is closing - they didn't get enough financing and help.
People often forget that the Fediverse is not running on money by ads but by users.
But you can follow @NSFVoyager2

@stux

in reply to stux⚡

And in 346 years Voyager will be stranded in the Delta Quadrant, facing a 75 year journey back to Federation space.
in reply to stux⚡

I thought size didn’t matter — 1.611 x 10^-17 ly is pretty average.

#Space #Voyager #Voyer

in reply to stux⚡

I really hope the speed of light isn't a fundamentally insurmountable limit. Because if it is, this would mean the universe is a rather boring place.
in reply to stux⚡

I follow @NSFVoyager2 . When I see a message like:

"I am currently ~19h 32m 21s of light travel time from Earth (2025:284:000000:2L)"

It gives me some much needed perspective. The account also posts about Voyager 1:

techhub.social/@NSFVoyager2/11…

#Space


Sister ship Voyager 1 is ~23h 24m 36s of light travel time from Earth (2025:284:120000:1L)

in reply to stux⚡

in the 1980s the most wise idea was, they'd travel in sleeper ships to encounter some Xenomorph. Because nobody managed to invent the warp. Except maybe Albert Einstein, and he meant you can't warp anything unless you are as massive as a star itself.
in reply to stux⚡

reading A Deepness in the Sky, a Vernor Vinge novel. In it humans have started to colonise the galaxy but at a fraction of the speed of light, so it's no space opera, and it takes centuries to get anywhere...

Space is big...

in reply to stux⚡

Voyagers 1 & 2 weren't optimized for maximum velocity, they followed the trajectories needed for their flybys. And that's not even considering what we could in principle build today (nuclear-electric). So I don't think "At Voyager's speed it would take xxx..." is really the best yardstick.