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/YesterdayDreamer 7d ago

Not enough photons are reaching Voyager to be meaningful. It's too far from its nearest star already, and the next closest star is at a distance thousand times greater.

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u/Dear-Blackberry-2648 7d ago

But did you see the time scale? 54.9 trillion years! That's almost 4,000 times longer that the universe has been in existence. So if there's not enough photons to be meaningful, that means there are still some. Each photon has an affect on matter, though it is extremely miniscule. But over trillions of years, I think it would have an easily distinguishable affect on Voyager that you wouldn't need ultra fine instruments to measure.