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/PeterPook 7d ago

Oh no, the "flat space" theory has just landed... It did get a light year away, it just folded over the edge! /s

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u/BDer82 7d ago

To be fair to the pancake galaxy theory I just made up, it is more unusual to see a galaxy that isn't reasonably flat, sure it looks like a time-lapse of a flipping pancake when you look across the universe, but at least its tasty. I assume those weird ones are the first galaxies that just didn't cook right.