Like Elvis, Voyager I has left the solar system. Unlike Elvis, Voyager, and its twin, Voyager II, aren’t going to return any time soon — they’ll be wandering the deepest reaches of our galaxy, meeting up with who knows what 40,000 light years from now. That’s about the time l’il ol’ Voyager may encounter a dwarf star in the constellation of Cameloparadalis. Makes you wonder what kind of shape Voyager will be in by then.
Speaking of constellations, have you noticed how a totally random star pattern is always named after something it’s supposed to resemble? Really, does Cameloparadalis look like a camel to you? Or Ursa Major look like a bear? Or Leo resembles a lion, Taurus a bull? No? I thought so.
It’s quite a feat, really, for a piece of machinery made 36 years ago on Earth, has now whirled its way out of our planetary system, to finally break free of the heliosphere. You know, the outer reaches of how far the sun’s influence and gravitational pull can reach.
Technically, according to the scientists, Voyager has yet to fight its way through the Oort Cloud, which is where comets come from (and you thought you knew the facts of life; a cosmic cabbage patch where baby comets are born …), which is an icy shell on the fringes of the solar system. It’s way out there, like billions and billions of miles from us. This belt of frozen bodies is joined by the Kuiper Belt, which is in Neptune’s neighborhood.
And the two of these together are thought to be what was left after the solar system itself formed, more than four billion years ago (not 6,000 years ago, sorry Creationists).
According to NASA, the American space agency, Voyager’s lonely trek into interstellar space is the first time ever that something made by humans is flinging itself across the universe. Now, if you subscribe to the Eric von Daniken theory that aliens visited the earth and created civilization (check out those stone temple carvings), then us waving bye-bye to Voyager is sort of a reverse of aliens among us. Now we are among them.
There was such a to-do about creating Voyager, or V’gr, the nickname given to the machine in the first “Star Trek” movie. We were so excited scribing into a gold plate as much human and animal and earth information as we could, even etching a drawing of a man and woman waving, “Hello, we’re friendly!”
Such technological marvels are quaint by today’s standards. But Voyager is no Edsel; despite what may be politely described as made from clunky technology of decades past, Voyager — both of them — are still going strong, their little nuclear-powered batteries now hurling them into space parts unknown. Not too shabby for using an eight-track tape recorder and computers with less memory than an iPhone.
Throughout Voyagers’ I and II histories, they sent back to us eagerly awaiting humans the most stunning, jaw-dropping and joyful pictures of our fantastic solar system. Who knew Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus had rings around their collars, that Saturn had scads of moons, that tiny moonlets make up Saturn’s familiar and oh so gorgeous rings, that icy eruptions periodically vent from the many, many moons shared by our system’s gas giant planets — that everything out there is so staggering awe-inspiring, wondrous and beautiful, beyond anything our little minds could imagine.
“This is historic stuff,” Edward C. Stone, now 77, and one of NASA’s top Voyager experts exclaimed. He started working on Voyager back in the bygone days of 1972, and probably never dreamed Voyager would keep trundling along at a speed of 38,000 miles an hour more than 11 billion miles from earth. Holy space probe, Batman!
A little explanation on the heliosphere, what it is and how it works: The sun, our star, tosses out charged particles into space, creating a hot plasma bubble all around the solar system. While not exactly like winds on our planet, the windy principle is similar, “blowing” hydrogen and helium gas way, way out there, cocooning us from the cold of deep space. Our solar wind, full of charged particles from the sun’s corona, interacts with the winds of space (space-time, maybe?), and creates a termination shock. Think of all these particles, gasses, and winds screeching to a halt, colliding into each other at the edge of this solar-produced space bubble. Sounds like a space train wreck to me.
Voyager apparently punched its way through this plasma and gas melee, and now has encountered interstellar gasses and winds. This is as far, far out as the Orion Arm of our Milky Way galaxy. Jeesh, but that’s a long way from home!
What’s even more amazing is that Voyager still will send us back radio info of what it finds out there, like what ancient star explosions are really made of — and the big if — what, if possible, Voyager meets up with a space probe sent by an intelligent species from another galaxy far, far away.
Well, it might happen!
I say Voyager’s venture into the final frontiers of space has been well worth our time, money, blood, sweat and tears. There’s something endearing about this little machine (sort of, Voyager is the size of a four-door sedan) that is zipping through the vast reaches of space, whistling in the dark corners of the universe. And we have every right to feel wistful about our representative fledgling leaving its solar nest, heading out on the Milky Way highway.
Who knows what adventures will come its way?
Jodeane Albright is an award-winning columnist/blogger and the community editor at the Idaho State Journal.
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