Its gone!

FAQ on NASA's Voyager site.

 

Not here it's not!

 

Stuff like this makes my feel very insignificant.

 

Just think.

The Voyager spacecraft will still be travelling through interstellar space thousands or even millions of years from now.

By which time, the species which created and launched it will probably have ceased to exist.

To me, that is a truly mind boggling thought.

 

All the while, because it has mass and therefore gravity, it will collect passing dust particles, and over time might actually grow, til in a few million years its just a great lump of rock and ice hurtling through space, and even if it does pass within seeing range of another civilisation, they might study their new comet and never even consider its bizarre origin.

 

Sad really. It contains a gold disc if I remember with engravings on of human DNA and recordings. You know how difficult it is to convert VHS to DVD. What chance have another civilisation got of reading it? If we're very very lucky it might make some alien a nice coaster. And even if they do manage to decipher it they will probably be to far away to make any form of contact. That's going on the assumption that any life is more advanced than ours.

Not against science but isn't it a valid argument that we should be concentrating on problems closer to home before spending billions on futile searches for alien life.

 

That's why I don't think that the "powers that be" are spending nearly enough on space exploration.
Can you imagine what might be achieved with modern technology? If we are still relying on 1970's??

 

The money was spent to study the outer planets, the disc was an extra just in case it gets found one day.

There was a joint Russian/Chinese mission to Phobos planned, but I think the probe got stuck in low Earth orbit. They've found something sticking out of Phobos that doesn't look natural.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobos_monolith

 

Its full of stars.

 

Interesting, I hadn't considered that Clueless.

Which then begs the question, just what might be hidden inside some of the comets which periodically visit our solar system?

Furthermore, some people have theorised that early life on earth was 'seeded' by material which arrived via comets or meteors which impacted the earth billions of years ago.

So........ is it just possible that Voyager contains some miniscule fragment of DNA material from earth, which, in billions of years time may end up on some far distant planet?
I know the probability of this is infinitesimally small, but it's something to think about.

 

Any one seen Star Trek, the Motion Picture?

 

This is a great video to watch along the lines of feeling insignificant:

 

Is that the one where the Enterprise has a malfunctioning toilet?

To boldly go etc.......

 

Good find. I think this video also puts us into some kind d of perspective