Get Ready, Because Voyager I Is *This Close* to Leaving Our Solar System

The Atlantic ^ | June 13, 2012 | Rebecca J. Rosen

[C19fan]

ast week, in the corners of the Internet devoted to outer space, things started to get a little, well, hot. Voyager 1, the man-made object farthest away from Earth, was encountering a sharp uptick in the number of a certain kind of energetic particles around it. Had the spacecraft become the first human creation to "officially" leave the solar system?

It's hard to overstate how wild an accomplishment this would be: A machine, built here on Earth by the brain- and handiwork of humans, has sailed from Florida, out of Earth's orbit, beyond Mars, beyond the gas giants of Jupiter and Saturn, and may now have left the heliosphere -- tiny dot in the universe beholden to our sun. Had it really happened? How would we know?

[GraceG]

They have been saying this about these space probes for years!

We need to build a ionpowered space probe that only has a goal of seeing how fast we can get it going. Something like a flying nuclear rocket with a constant ion engine on it. I wanna see humans hit at least 1% the speed of light before I croak.

[Army Air Corps]

Ah yes, Persis Khambatta. Pity that she died in 1998.

[SpinnerWebb]

Or as V'Giny

V'Gina?

[COBOL2Java]

Looking forward to Voyager's return as V'Ger.

Just don't sing...

[Dead Corpse]

“Yeah, its got a hemi...”

[Red Badger]

IF it exists...............

[cripplecreek]

http://www.icarusinterstellar.org/

[cripplecreek]

Personally I think the Ort cloud isn’t a shell around our solar system but is just the standard stuff that exists in interstellar space.

[faucetman]

“V ger”

[Lazamataz]

Ah yes, Persis Khambatta. Pity that she died in 1998.

Worst day of my life.

Hers, too.

[762X51]

No, V’Giny. The FCC V Chip satellite collided with the United States Air Force’s Flying Destiny. It’s from Futurama. They spoofed the Star Trek V’Ger episode. It’s not funny when you have to explain it.

[Conservative4Ever]

You may be right, but I’ll bet it’s over the rainbow. :-)

[BenLurkin]

How do we get that gold record back? We need to melt it down to buy gas.

[Jack Hydrazine]

I’m hoping that once they put a VASIMIR engine on the ISS and test it fully that they will do something like you are proposing.

[Red Badger]

If it exists, the every star should have one similar. We should be able to detect Oort Clouds around most every star we look at. Why should our sun be so unique?

The comets and other junk are leftovers from some far supernovae or other destructive processes out in the universe, like bugs on your windshield on the interstate.......................

[tob2]

My thoughts exactly! lol

[DonkeyBonker]

To quote Maxwell Smart, “Missed it by that much.”.

[Lockbar]

Twenty Five years to leave the sloar system? What a slow-poke. Thought it was already gone years ago.

[STD]

Our generations ‘tower of babel’

[PT57A]

"I got yer pon farr right here little darlin, how about cozyin' up that shiny dome of yours next to old Uncle Spock here for an old fashioned hoochie mama mind meld?"