this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2024
383 points (99.2% liked)
Technology
60052 readers
3244 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Is it in orbit? And more importantly, is it in orbit around us?
It is, but not around us. It doesn't matter, because that orbit still comes back around.
It won't necessarily come back. Till the orbits of Voyager and the Solar system intersect, we would've merged with Andromeda, which would completely change all orbits in unpredictable ways. So no, you cannot say with confidence that Voyager will return back to the Solar system before the Sun dies purely using orbital mechanics.
I would believe that if the universe was not constantly expanding, that would be mathematically true. I'm not mathematician, but I think with a constantly expanding universe, that's not a mathematical certainty.
As I understand it, expansion doesn't really affect local systems like galaxies directly/significantly. It's not really a factor for voyager returning or not.
Maybe in some perfect high school physics problem context. Ever heard of the three body problem? How about the million body problem zooming through the galaxy?
Why would be expect a deep space probe to return to earth when it’s going to interact with many objects with millions of times the mass of the earth?