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Voyager 1 is still transmitting from beyond the heliosphere on 22 watts — less power than the bulb in your hallway — and the engineers who built it in the 1970s never expected we'd still be listening (spacedaily.com)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by inari@piefed.zip to c/space@beehaw.org

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[-] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 50 points 3 months ago

The bulb in my hallway is 3.2w. Still impressive though.

[-] i_stole_ur_taco@lemmy.ca 25 points 3 months ago

The bulb was probably designed and manufactured by people who weren’t even born when Voyager launched. It’s wild how long and how far it’s been calling home.

[-] dgriffith@aussie.zone 22 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

The beamwidth of Voyager 1's antenna is about 0.5 degrees. In practical terms, that's very narrow, about an 8 metre wide beam at a kilometre distance.

At its current distance, by the time the beam reaches Earth it is 224 million kilometres wide, 1.5x the distance from the Earth to the sun.

Now imagine the light from a car's taillights lighting up the back wall of a garage as it reverses in. Then spread that same amount of light out over that 224 million km wide beamwidth. That's what Voyager is putting out and what the Deep Space Network dishes have to listen for.

[-] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 14 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Kinda puts the huge distances into a bit of perspective. How difficult is it to pick up that kind of signal? I struggle to get WiFi in the garden.

[-] LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz 10 points 3 months ago

https://www.nasa.gov/communicating-with-missions/dsn/

The Deep Space Network is very impressive.

[-] newton@feddit.online 6 points 3 months ago

You guys have a hallway ?

[-] inari@piefed.zip 18 points 3 months ago

NASA has a neat little video showing the path taken by Voyager 1: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4139

[-] A_norny_mousse@piefed.zip 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Very interesting. So they both manouvred (slingshot) using planets' gravity wells? Not everything in SciFi is fiction I guess.

And V1 has traveled further from our solar system than the solar system's diameter. Wow.

Extremely high bitrate on the video due to starry background, btw. My old lappy got wheezy.

[-] Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 10 points 3 months ago

Yes, and there was a 175 year window for the planets to be lined up like that.

[-] A_norny_mousse@piefed.zip 5 points 3 months ago

You mean the planets just sat there for 175 years? Wow, I really learned something new today.

[-] Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Windows to use all the gas giants for gravity slingshots in quick succession only occur every 175 years. Is that better?

[-] snooggums@piefed.world 5 points 3 months ago

Yes

[-] ruuster13@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 months ago

In the scientific fiction genre, everything is scientifically possible. That's the entire premise. Time tells us what they get right and what becomes fantasy.

[-] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 months ago

Nothing in Star Wars is scientifically possible or ever will be.

[-] RicoBerto@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 points 3 months ago

Star wars is barely science fiction. It's basically fantasy with a bit of tech.

[-] Steve@communick.news 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

It's absolutely fantasy. No debate. So is Star Trek.

Actual science fiction is like the recent Hail Mary. Everything is based on literal real science, with maybe one "what if" kind of stretch.

[-] RicoBerto@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 months ago

I don't know that i'd go that far. There is certainly debate on what constutes hard or soft sci-fi, but I'd say as long as the technology is either the focus, or is the main facilitator of the story then it's more sci-fi. In star wars there is not much technology that is necessarily required, all of it could have been replaced with fantasy elements and it's the same. It's not a focus, whereas the expanse for instance relies upon the limitations of the technology to drive the plot.

I don't know could be talking out my ass, purely vibes based genre definition.

[-] Steve@startrek.website 3 points 3 months ago

Wut

[-] Steve@communick.news 2 points 3 months ago

Not everything, no.
That's called fantasy.

[-] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 17 points 3 months ago

22W LED bulb? For suntanning?

[-] Dionysus@leminal.space 10 points 3 months ago

The person who wrote this was also as old as the engineers who built Voyager and assume everyone still uses incandescent bulbs.

Didn't the Mango Mussolini go on a rant once about LED bulbs?

[-] kalpol@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 months ago

Its actually lower than a lot of LED bulbs. The heaters are what's using most of the power.

[-] Arancello@aussie.zone 7 points 3 months ago

this is the kind of content i come here for! love it.

[-] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 6 points 3 months ago

That was back when bulbs lasted almost forever until they changed them so they'd break earlier so you'd have to spend money to buy more bulbs. Voyager is like the bulbs of old.

[-] scibra122@piefed.social 5 points 3 months ago

Carrying water for incandescent bulbs on the basis of their reliability is wild. Yeah, several companies have taken advantage of the conception of lightbulbs as a disposable good to cheap out on LED bulb construction until they are also disposable, but they did that so successfully because changing incandescent bulbs was such a common occurrence, it was the template for a proto-meme joke. Not everything in the past was better than things today

[-] Don_alForno@feddit.org 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Changing incandescent bulbs was common because they lasted too long in the past and were intentionally made less reliable to make more money. It's a cascade of enshittification at this point.