We are going to lose it before long i wonder if it will be possible to find it on a future date in theory.
This is read as "near zero" rather than "no chance". "Expected" is a word of uncertainty.
I think the rough napkin math would be: take the volume that the probe will sweep through and multiply it by the volume of matter in the universe/volume of the universe.
It will be sitting at something like -450F. Could it really lose form!? Is the idea that all the phonons could converge to one point, shifting an atom of metal (which will happen infinitely with infinite time)? Maybe with random photons/hydrogen/whatever "continuously" adding energy?
Neat.
Not sure about “melting” into an amorphous mass, I guess in theory the probes gravity could do that, but I would imagine even the tiniest force would disturb that and dissipate it.
It’s gravitationally bound to the Milky way so it’s going to keep wandering into and out of star systems for a very long time. We’re talking a large multiple of the age of the universe meanwhile plenty of space rocks show encounters with other space rocks on a vastly smaller timescale. If nothing else it’s got decent odds of being part of the star formation process. Stars are ~10% of the milky way’s mass and star formation is going to continue for a while.
Times have changed somewhat!
> It will take about 300 years for Voyager 1 to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud and possibly about 30,000 years to fly beyond it.
When will we need more resources than exist here? We'll be mining the sun to run future simulations. Do we need more compute? Seems like we'll just stay inside.
Most life is probably similarly bound up to their origin. That and life is hard by many, many, many hard steps. Earth life is nearly 30% the age of the universe and it took us this long to get here.
It'd be near impossible for aquatic life to have an industrial revolution without aqueous chemistry control. Can't do that when you're stuck inside water. It's also hard to evolve reasoning when you can't see far ahead. Little evolutionary pressure on reasoning over time and distance.
And it's hard to leave water. You need to evolve new eyes and lungs to live on land. And then you need an energy source like O2, which tends not to stick around.
So many reasons.
The distances of space are certainly one holding us back now.
It's kind of wild to think about: we might end up collapsing our own civilization before we ever make it beyond our solar system.
At this point, I suspect the next real explorers won't be us, but probes carrying intelligent machines..our robotic descendants venturing where we can’t.
WarOnPrivacy•2h ago
Neuronaut•2h ago