Good point, well made.

Mark

I suppose, relative to the distances it is now experiencing, it is travelling at infinitesimal speeds.

Still though, it's travelling 17km every second. That means every day it travels 4 times the distance to the moon!

Well the Sol system travels at roughly 600km/s, so 17km/s would be like shuffling to work rather than taking the car.

Relatively, yes. However we didn't create the Sol system like we did with V'ger.

Mark

A'e we t'king l'ke th's n'w?

No. I was making a Star Trek reference.
Clearly you're not cool enough to understand that. (8+p

Mark

Wrong word inserted in sentence, please replace with one of the following

geeky
sad
lonely
lacking in life

::Puts hand up:: I got it

I couldn't think what to reply with though.

I was thinking though, RE the sol speed thingy...

Surely V'ger is travelling at 17km/s relative to the Sun and so when it breached the bow shock will be travelling at the same relative speed to the other stars also?

Travelling as fast as it is it would still take over 8 years to get from the Sun to Pluto!

Never thought for a second you wouldn't, Oli. (8+)

Mark

Good point.

Someone travelling in Concorde, crawling from the back of the cabin to the front may be travelling faster than Concorde, but probably not in the same sense as someone on the outside crawling from the tail to the nose (if they could). Same speed, different relativity.

Regardless of the relativity argument, crossing the solar system barrier is a monumentous occasion for humankind, even if it is unhumanned.

Yes, definitely!

It is quite awe inspiring to think about what has been achieved.

It brings me back to when I used to think about the size of the universe and it used to blow my mind. Only thing is that I really didn't have a big enough idea of the scale of everything.

There was a time when I thought that beyond Pluto would be a few rocks flying about, then the "edge" of the solar system (although I dind't know how that could be defined) and then a bit further beyond that would be then next solar system into which you would start to pass planets etc... and then reach the star in the middle.

just did a bit of maths...

If Voyager was on a direct path to Proxima Centauri (the closest star to the sun) then (subtracting the 33 years it has already been travelling) it would take another 77,437 years to get there!

OMLG!

That's just ridiculous! I really, really, really didn't have a big enough idea of the scale of things!

Protip, read more quality SyFy.

Ha! (8+)

Mark

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