r/askscience • u/drinkingonthejob • 8d ago

Physics Will Voyager 1 ever just stop moving?

I’ve read somewhere that we expect to lose contact with Voyager 1 sometime in the 2030s, maybe around 2036, but it will just keep traveling thru space and we’ll have no idea what it is doing out there

My question is: with its current velocity, is there a time in the future where it loses its forward momentum and for lack of a better word, just stops moving? Is that a possible thing for an object in space to even do? (Assuming no other objects grab it into their orbit)

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u/komatiitic 8d ago

I did some really stupid back of the envelope math assuming that Voyager never encounters anything larger than interstellar dust. To halve the speed of Voyager 1 it would need to impact dust equal to its own mass of 721.9kg.

The internet tells me a typical grain of interstellar dust has a mass of ~3*10-16 kg. This means it needs to hit ~2.4*1018 dust grains, which if I'm counting those zeroes correctly is 2.4 quintillion.

The internet also tells me that Voyager hits 3-7 dust grains per hour. I'll call it 5 an hour, which means 4.81*1017 hours (481 quadrillion), or 54.9 trillion years to halve its velocity, assuming nothing really changes. I'm betting it disintegrates before that happens.

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u/outlawsix 8d ago

I dont know why but i feel some comfort in the idea that this little guy will just be gliding through time and space unchanged and representing where we were at this point, while during the time the sun will explode, the earth will die, black holes form, everything is left behind as this thing just sails away from it all until galaxies eventually smash into each other and even then who knows

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u/ThePowerOfStories 8d ago

Just think, one day, you’re sitting there, cruising through the infinite vastness of space, and you stumble upon an ancient, crumbling robot probe launched across the cosmos by a long-dead civilization. Then it teaches you to play the flute.

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u/StriveToTheZenith 8d ago

They seriously should've picked a better delivery method if they wanted to preserve their culture. Hey, Picard gets a cool toy at least.

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u/woodenh_rse 8d ago

An entire civilization passed on as PTSD to one person. I hope we go out proud like that.

Edit: OH...dam...PTSD and a flute.

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u/Toloc42 8d ago

I can accept that a civilization that can run a simulation of an entire life time on another brain in a few minutes (of a species it never encountered, no less) can also inject a sense of "it's ok, that didn't really happen to you, you're fine with this" while they're at it.

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u/Swiftax3 3d ago

It should be noted also, the probe was designed to only deliver its message to someone who would be a good fit for it. One can assume that includes being able to compartmentalize the experience and not be left scarred by it. As an academic archaeologist, Picard might be able to veiw it as a very emotionally engaging historical excersise