NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft officially is the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space. The 36-year-old probe is about 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) from our sun.
I notice the Voyager NASA web page now says interstellar mission.
Quote from: Star One on 09/12/2013 07:02 pmI notice the Voyager NASA web page now says interstellar mission.It said that for a long time already.
Oort Cloud question. If the Oort cloud is actually there, why hasn't any of it's material eclipsed any visual observations of stars? If all this material is there it should have shown up in observations by now.
That's if it exists at all. I'm not so sure.
Quote from: mr. mark on 09/13/2013 05:38 amThat's if it exists at all. I'm not so sure.It's based on studying the orbits of long-period comets.
What the theory also states is the that the Oort cloud is made up of shared material with other neighboring stars so if you were traveling to the nearest star system you would not pass through a boundary instead it would be shared between star systems. I have a feeling that long period comets do not make up enough material to make up a "cloud" of material. How do we know that there is a cloud at all. It could be that interstellar space is littered with space junk from the formation of stars and our galaxy and once our sun's gravitational pull intersects with those objects they are captured.