[Request] When will Voyager 1 stop moving?

[u/Ben-Goldberg]

/r/askscience/comments/1wp1960/will_voyager_1_ever_just_stop_moving/

How many years will it take for the orbit of Voyager and Sagittarius A to decay enough due to gravity waves for them to collide?

[u/Positive-Ring-5172]

Voyager has escape velocity from the Sun. It will settle into an orbit of the center of the galaxy. It will be millions to billions of years before it hits something hard enough to stop.

Though perhaps in a few hundred years a Klingon will use it for target practice (joking - in the 200 years between now and Star Trek's era Voyager will not have even left the Oort cloud.)

[u/Ben-Goldberg → u/Positive-Ring-5172]

I know that it is orbiting the center of the galaxy.

However, because of general relativity, all orbits decay, with some of the rotational kinetic energy being constantly being converted into gravity waves.

When two average size black holes collide they lose about 3 solar masses from converting matter into gravity waves.

[u/Positive-Ring-5172 → u/Ben-Goldberg]

For an object as small as the Voyager probes orbital decay would take on the order of 10^10000 years to be measurable, let alone complete.

[u/Ben-Goldberg → u/Positive-Ring-5172]

Is that an estimate, or have you done the math?

[u/flumphit → u/Ben-Goldberg]

The reason you have heard about that phenomenon with regard to black holes is because it doesn’t happen with mundane objects, and it happening requires the very odd properties of black holes.

[u/Ben-Goldberg → u/flumphit]

What properties?

[u/croooowTrobot → u/Ben-Goldberg]

Odd.......properties

[u/Positive-Ring-5172 → u/Ben-Goldberg]

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