adjusterjack
Super Moderator
Voyager 1 is currently almost 25 billion miles from Earth.
How far will it have to go to reach the nearest star?
How far will it have to go to reach the nearest star?
Science Question
- Thread Starter adjusterjack
- Start date
army judge
Super Moderator
The intrepid Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts were launched in 1977, and despite having a roughly 12-year mission lifespan, are still hurtling through space and returning data to eager scientists on Earth. They've broken through barrier that protects our solar system and are now zipping through the interstellar medium along with Pioneer 10 and 11.
But how long might it take them, or another spacecraft, to actually reach another star system?
A team of scientists—Coryn Bailer-Jones of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Switzerland and Davide Farnocchia of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory—have done the calculations. Essentially, the pair found a way to chart how long it would take a spacecraft to get from our humble solar system to the next system over, according to a paper uploaded to the pre-print server arXiv.
In the quest for answers, Farnocchia and Bailer-Jones turned to the European Space Agency's Gaia space telescope for help. For more than five years, Gaia has been gathering data on billions of stars, charting their orbits and path through the cosmos.
Using this data and data about the projected paths of both the voyager spacecrafts as well as Pioneer 10 and 11, which are careening toward the outer reaches of the solar system, the researchers were able to create a timeline of when these crafts might reach distant star systems. For those eager to visit other worlds, brace for some bad news.
Should they continue their transit, the four spacecraft will come within striking distance of approximately 60 stars in the next million years. And in that same amount of time, they'll get even closer—try two parsecs, the equivalent of 6.5 light years—to about 10 stars.
Who will have the best shot at reaching and exploring a distant star? Pioneer 10 will swing within .231 parsecs the star system HIP 117795 in the Cassiopeia constellation in approximately 90,000 years. And how long before one of these spacecrafts is hijacked by the orbit of one of these stars? It'll be about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.
You'll have some time to kill.
Scientists Have Calculated How Long It'll Take to Reach Distant Stars
Are we there yet?
adjusterjack
Super Moderator
zddoodah
Well-Known Member
Somewhere between 24,990,700,000 and 25,009,300,000 miles (depending on the relative positions of Voyager, the Earth and the Sun).
zddoodah
Well-Known Member
I put my decimal point in the wrong place. Correct numbers are 24,907,000,000 and 25,093,000,000.
army judge
Super Moderator
Who will have the best shot at reaching and exploring a distant star?
Pioneer 10 will swing within .231 parsecs the star system HIP 117795 in the Cassiopeia constellation in approximately 90,000 years.
How long before one of the spacecrafts are hijacked by the orbit of one of many stars?
It'll be about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.
You'll have some time to kill.
HOWEVER, probability reveals YOU'VE BEEN DEAD AN EXTREMELY LONG TIME!!!
Pioneer 10 will swing within .231 parsecs the star system HIP 117795 in the Cassiopeia constellation in approximately 90,000 years.
How long before one of the spacecrafts are hijacked by the orbit of one of many stars?
It'll be about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.
You'll have some time to kill.
HOWEVER, probability reveals YOU'VE BEEN DEAD AN EXTREMELY LONG TIME!!!
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adjusterjack
Super Moderator
That's correct. Our sun is the nearest star to the current position of Voyager 1.
Other responders may have made an erroneous assumption about the question.
Does that take into account the expansion of space and relative motions of solar systems within galaxies?
Zigner
Well-Known Member
While the sun is the nearest star, it is not the nearest star that can be reached by the probe. The probe will never be able to reach the sun (without outside intervention), thus, its distance is irrelevant to the discussion
adjusterjack
Super Moderator
It's the practical issues that are irrelevant. It was a trick question designed to catch the unwary who make assumptions that don't fit the parameters of the question.
Like the guy at FA who wrote:
The Wizard will now bestow on Zddoodah the coveted THD (Doctor of Thinkology).
Like the guy at FA who wrote:
The Wizard will now bestow on Zddoodah the coveted THD (Doctor of Thinkology).
Or 0.0042685 light years. Approximately 1,569 days.
adjusterjack
Super Moderator
And a hearty Hi Yo Silver.
zddoodah
Well-Known Member
I'm not sure what you think is the difference between "the nearest star" and "the nearest star that can be reached by the probe," but the question asked about the distance that would need to be traveled to reach the nearest star. "The nearest star" is the sun. The sun is approximately 93 million miles from Earth. If Voyager is 25 billion miles from Earth, then the distance to "the nearest star" is 25 billion miles +/- 93 million miles. The next nearest star after the sun is 1,000x further than the sun (approximately 4.246 light years, which is about 25 trillion miles (+/- 25 billion miles from Voyager's present location)). Voyager has no ability to reach any star "without outside intervention, so the need for outside intervention is irrelevant.
It's also worth pointing out that Alpha Centauri isn't a star. It's a system of three separate stars. Proxima Centauri is the closest star to our Sun.
