Voyager 1 space probe on the boarder of interstellar space

[MrFun]

This is awesome!



Last night, I watched an interesting, fasinating documentary hosted by astronomers, biologists and geologists in which they use computer digital technology to portray hypothetical planets and hypothetical alien lifeforms. The show is called Extraterrestrial.

[JimmyCracksCorn]

Originally posted by Joseph
If Star Trek is correct, Verger will be home in 200 years.

With this guy on it

[Whoha]

Originally posted by Lancer
Fast...it has achieved 'Britney' speed.

I think it was a really stupid putting our address on the things. We have no idea who will end up with them.

if someone finds it they are going to know for damned sure which star it came from considering how far it could possibly travel and how fast it is going.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by pchang
The real problem is that if any alien species finds those things, they'll know exactly where to go for an easy conquest.

Unfortunately, they'll also likely mistranslate the verbal greetings to something like "good eats, come n get it"

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
Calling that the border of interstellar space is pretty much stupid, since the Outer Oort Cloud, home of comets, reaches a thousand times further out.

The occasional rock loosely more or less orbiting the sun until something kicks it isn't interesting as a boundary. The difference in the nature and origin of particles (outbound solar wind vs. interstellar particles) is somewhat more useful, although the whole idea of a border is pretty silly no matter how you define it.

[Whaleboy]

Indeed, most main-seq. stars are reckoned to have something like an Oort cloud that would interact with, and exchange bodies with other such clouds... plus in a given sphere with a radius of 1AU, you're probably going to find only ~100 bodies.

Magnetic or plasma-related boundaries make more sense, especially since rocky bodies are only incidental to what is essentially the magnetic+plasma phenomenon of the sun.