V _ _ _ ger

[right_to_know]

It's trying to say,
"Where We're Going You Wont Need Eyes To See."

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

'One Moon circles'.

 

[Pohemi]

Just for funsies. It takes 43.24 hours for round trip communications.

Considering that photons take 8 minutes to reach Earth from the (surface of) the Sun, 21.6 hours one-way to reach Voyager 1 puts it in a "waayyyyy out there" perspective, heh.

 

[JEDI]

May 19 (UPI) -- NASA engineers are investigating a mystery with telemetry data from the aging Voyager 1 probe.

The Voyager 1 probe, currently 14.5 billion miles from Earth, is receiving and executing commands from NASA team on Earth and sending back science data, according to a NASA statement.

...................

Voyager 1's signal hasn't weakened, which suggests its antenna remains properly aligned, but the telemetry data it's returning appears random or impossible, engineers said.

...................

The engineering team plans to continue monitoring the signal to determine whether the invalid telemetry data is coming directly from AACS or another system involved in producing and sending such data.

NASA engineers investigate Voyager 1 spacecraft data mystery - UPI.com

NASA engineers are investigating a mystery with telemetry data from the 45-year-old Voyager 1 probe, which is 14.5 billion miles from Earth, though they say the spacecraft continues to receive and execute commands.

www.upi.com

Cue Ilia?

45yrs later, how is the Vger probe still operating?
i dont see solar panels.


WTF Energizer batteries?

 

[Paratus]

45yrs later, how is the Vger probe still operating?
i dont see solar panels.
View attachment 63355

WTF Energizer batteries?

RTGs. Radio isotope thermal electric generator. A large chunk of highly radioactive plutonium gives off a bunch of heat that gets converted to electricity.

 

[JEDI]

RTGs. Radio isotope thermal electric generator. A large chunk of highly radioactive plutonium gives off a bunch of heat that gets converted to electricity.

i'm assuming solar panels are better? (ie: james webb telescope)

 

[SaltyNuts]

Who would have thought, that out of all the Star Trek movies, the very first scene of the very first movie was the coolest by far. What an awesome clip. Star Trek II had some good ones too, but what a huge letdown to what they could have been. Other than that first scene LOL.

 

[SaltyNuts]

Voyager 1 has reached the edge of our simulated universe.

Oh, its simulated all right, I pretty much proved that years ago on here. But Voyager is many, many billions of light years away from getting to the "edge" - and there is not really an edge anyways since in the simulation it all circles back on itself. Thing about walking along the surface of the Earth - you would never get to the "edge" (unless you believe crack-pot flat earthers...).

 

[SaltyNuts]

i'm assuming solar panels are better? (ie: james webb telescope)

LOL, wtf? NO. They won't do SQUAT out between the stars, or even much further out in our solar system...

 

[Paratus]

i'm assuming solar panels are better? (ie: james webb telescope)

Short answer? It depends.

Long Answer:
If the mission is between the sun and Mars generally solar panels can meet mission requirements. They tend to be fairly lightweight for the power they provide

First thing to understand is how solar power drops with the distance from the sun. Sp below is the power in Watts/meter squared available from the sun at the orbital distance from the sun at each of the planets



you can see that the power available drops from over 9000 W/m^2 at Mercury to only 580W/m^2 at Mars. Save is the average amount of power received at the surface of the planet in W/m^2. (It’s 1/4 of Sp due to geometry and doesn’t take into account an atmospheric effects. In general power at the poles is basically 0 while it’s almost equal to Sp on the equator at noon. Of course the night side is 0 too).

Once past Jupiter solar energy is so low there’s no way launch enough solar panels to power a mission.

For a solar array based power system there are some complexities. Almost all missions in orbit around or landed on a body will have night passes which means adding batteries which adds complexity and weight. If the spacecraft needs X watts to run then you need to size your batteries to provide more than X for the longest night pass it might see.

The arrays have to be sized to produce 2-3 X so they can run the systems and recharge the batteries while the sun is out. Sometimes that means adding gimbals to track the sun or keeping the vehicle pointed so the arrays are pointed at the sun. Both add complexity or constraints to operations.

RTGs on the other hand will provide power consistently anywhere for decades. They also provide a lot of waste heat which can be used to reduce the need for heaters.

They do decrease power output overtime by about .8%/year. But as Voyager has shown you can run a mission for over 40 years by turning non essential science equipment off.

Their major issues are the PU238 used to provide power is almost gone. It was a an unwanted byproduct of Cold War nuclear warhead production which no one is doing anymore. We’ve used our stockpile and we bought up the Russian stockpile back in the 90’s.

NASA is supposed to be working with the DOE to make a scientific reactor to produce a few KGs of it a year for deep space missions.

RTGs are not very efficient as their thermocouples only convert a few % of the heat to electricity. Which makes them kind of heavy for the power they produce. They are surprisingly safe. The radiation PU238 gives off is easily shielded alpha particles and they have no moving parts. It’s effectively a big hunk of metal that gives off electricity and heat.

I remember a story of the USAF launching one in a satellite in 60’s when the rocket blew up. They fished the RTG out of the ocean and put it on the next satellite as it was basically fine.


We’ve done solar array based missions out to Jupiter (JUNO) with the newest most efficient space rated arrays. At Earth they produced 14,000Watts. At Jupiter 485Watts.

We’ve also done RTG missions for the last two rovers (Curiosity and Perseverance) on Mars due to long Martian winter nights and the issues with dust on solar arrays.

So to sum up, it really depends on the mission which power source is right.

 

[Paratus]

Oh, its simulated all right, I pretty much proved that years ago on here. But Voyager is many, many billions of light years away from getting to the "edge" - and there is not really an edge anyways since in the simulation it all circles back on itself. Thing about walking along the surface of the Earth - you would never get to the "edge" (unless you believe crack-pot flat earthers...).

Simulated? If this is a simulation then what is the simulation running in? At some point you have to have a real universe for the base simulation to be running in. If it’s simulations all the way down might as well be turtles.

 

[SaltyNuts]

Simulated? If this is a simulation then what is the simulation running in? At some point you have to have a real universe for the base simulation to be running in. If it’s simulations all the way down might as well be turtles.

I have absolutely, positively no idea what the simulation is running in. But you could ask the same question as to someone who says "oh, the universe just IS". Well, its doing stuff, so what is it doing stuff IN? If its in something now what was here before universe was here? It gets you nowhere, no answers. In a simulated universe, it makes absolute sense that YOU WOULD NOT KNOW WHAT THE SIMULATION IS BEING RUN IN BECAUSE OF THE INHERENT NATURE OF THE SIMULATION. Think if you ran a simulation with sentient beings in your (super advanced) computer, they would be asking the same question about where they came from, but no answers (unless you programmed in answers for them or left some flaw accidentally that allowed them to understand the world outside their simulation).

Nor does "it might as well just be turtles" have any relevance. No, based on pure logic I think the universe being a simulation is logically about a billion trillion billion trillion times more like than the answer being "turtles".

We should be searching for some kind of flaw in the simulation (mentioned above) that might allow us to gain insight into the real nature of the universe and more importantly what is outside it. We might never find it, it might not exist, but that should be our focus. Rather than science dorks writing books about the universe can just magically appear out of nothing and there are an infinite numbers of universes and that solves the issue and no need to ask these important questions. Such silliness.

 

[Charmonium]

Short answer? It depends.

Long Answer:
If the mission is between the sun and Mars generally solar panels can meet mission requirements. They tend to be fairly lightweight for the power they provide

First thing to understand is how solar power drops with the distance from the sun. Sp below is the power in Watts/meter squared available from the sun at the orbital distance from the sun at each of the planets

View attachment 63373

you can see that the power available drops from over 9000 W/m^2 at Mercury to only 580W/m^2 at Mars. Save is the average amount of power received at the surface of the planet in W/m^2. (It’s 1/4 of Sp due to geometry and doesn’t take into account an atmospheric effects. In general power at the poles is basically 0 while it’s almost equal to Sp on the equator at noon. Of course the night side is 0 too).

Once past Jupiter solar energy is so low there’s no way launch enough solar panels to power a mission.

For a solar array based power system there are some complexities. Almost all missions in orbit around or landed on a body will have night passes which means adding batteries which adds complexity and weight. If the spacecraft needs X watts to run then you need to size your batteries to provide more than X for the longest night pass it might see.

The arrays have to be sized to produce 2-3 X so they can run the systems and recharge the batteries while the sun is out. Sometimes that means adding gimbals to track the sun or keeping the vehicle pointed so the arrays are pointed at the sun. Both add complexity or constraints to operations.

RTGs on the other hand will provide power consistently anywhere for decades. They also provide a lot of waste heat which can be used to reduce the need for heaters.

They do decrease power output overtime by about .8%/year. But as Voyager has shown you can run a mission for over 40 years by turning non essential science equipment off.

Their major issues are the PU238 used to provide power is almost gone. It was a an unwanted byproduct of Cold War nuclear warhead production which no one is doing anymore. We’ve used our stockpile and we bought up the Russian stockpile back in the 90’s.

NASA is supposed to be working with the DOE to make a scientific reactor to produce a few KGs of it a year for deep space missions.

RTGs are not very efficient as their thermocouples only convert a few % of the heat to electricity. Which makes them kind of heavy for the power they produce. They are surprisingly safe. The radiation PU238 gives off is easily shielded alpha particles and they have no moving parts. It’s effectively a big hunk of metal that gives off electricity and heat.

I remember a story of the USAF launching one in a satellite in 60’s when the rocket blew up. They fished the RTG out of the ocean and put it on the next satellite as it was basically fine.


We’ve done solar array based missions out to Jupiter (JUNO) with the newest most efficient space rated arrays. At Earth they produced 14,000Watts. At Jupiter 485Watts.

We’ve also done RTG missions for the last two rovers (Curiosity and Perseverance) on Mars due to long Martian winter nights and the issues with dust on solar arrays.

So to sum up, it really depends on the mission which power source is right.

Thermionic devices do create a current w/o moving parts, but there's a bit more to it. First, you need a substance that doesn't have strongly bound valence electrons. Most elements have several electron layers or orbitals. The more you heat the media, it becomes progressively easier to spirit the outer orbital's electrons away. All you need to do then is give them someplace to go.

I tried to something like this in HS physics. Cadmium seemed like the best choice but this process only works in a vacuum. Plus, the part of the circuit shepherding the electrons off to do work, can't be in direct contact with whatever "electron donor" substance that you're using.

Well, as it turns out, my skevoid physics teacher would later be exposed as a pedophile. But even worse, he was completely useless in terms of any assistance. I can give an example of what a maroon (moron) he was but it's just too embarrassing to even think about. I should probably go to a class reunion just to see if ever boinked anyone at the school. But since I bailed on my classmates and skipped senior year, the people organizing these things seem to have taken that personally. That's not really what I would classify as "bad" news though.

As a result having virtually no competent guidance, I finally gave up and wrote to the AEC (look it up) for an alternate design. They wrote back to say there was a certain model of vacuum tube that would demo the principle. You just needed a multimeter to tap the right pins. Then you could see current being produced.

 

[Paratus]

I have absolutely, positively no idea what the simulation is running in. But you could ask the same question as to someone who says "oh, the universe just IS". Well, its doing stuff, so what is it doing stuff IN? If its in something now what was here before universe was here? It gets you nowhere, no answers. In a simulated universe, it makes absolute sense that YOU WOULD NOT KNOW WHAT THE SIMULATION IS BEING RUN IN BECAUSE OF THE INHERENT NATURE OF THE SIMULATION. Think if you ran a simulation with sentient beings in your question, they would be asking the same question about where they came from, but no answers (unless you programmed in answers for them or left some flaw accidentally that allowed them to understand the world outside their simulation).

Nor does "it might as well just be turtles" have any relevance. No, based on pure logic I think the universe being a simulation is logically about a billion trillion billion trillion times more like than the answer being "turtles".

We should be searching for some kind of flaw in the simulation (mentioned above) that might allow us to gain insight into the real nature of the universe and more importantly what is outside it. We might never find it, it might not exist, but that should be our focus. Rather than science dorks writing books about the universe can just magically appear out of nothing and there are an infinite numbers of universes and that solves the issue and no need to ask these important questions. Such silliness.

If the question is “Why is there anything at all?” The answer “it’s a simulation” doesn’t actually answer the question anymore than “it’s turtles all the way down”.

There’s also some fundamental limits on how much data is required to store the description of every particle in the universe which makes unlikely but not impossible for our universe to be a simulation.

 

[SaltyNuts]

If the question is “Why is there anything at all?” The answer “it’s a simulation” doesn’t actually answer the question anymore than “it’s turtles all the way down”.

There’s also some fundamental limits on how much data is required to store the description of every particle in the universe which makes unlikely but not impossible for our universe to be a simulation.

1. Sure it does. A simulation can explain it, as I've stated above. Turtles don't do shit but eat, shit and replicate, just saying "its turtles all the way down" is just silly nonsense. Don't be coy. Of course it being a simulation does not answer the question "well who and what are the simulators", but as I said already we need to try and find a flaw, opening in the simulation, whatever you want to call it, to get the bigger truth.

2. Are you using some limits to data transfer in the laws the simulators put into effect for our simulated universe to try and describe what lies outside our simulated universe and what its laws might be? LOL, come on man...

 

[zinfamous]

1. Sure it does. A simulation can explain it, as I've stated above. Turtles don't do shit but eat, shit and replicate, just saying "its turtles all the way down" is just silly nonsense. Don't be coy. Of course it being a simulation does not answer the question "well who and what are the simulators", but as I said already we need to try and find a flaw, opening in the simulation, whatever you want to call it, to get the bigger truth.

2. Are you using some limits to data transfer in the laws the simulators put into effect for our simulated universe to try and describe what lies outside our simulated universe and what its laws might be? LOL, come on man...

It's not nonsense. That was the understanding of the Universe for many centuries longer than poseur tech bros started pretending that everything was just a big computer, for literally no rational reason whatsoever.

There is no fundamental difference in logic between claiming we are running around in a simulation, vs we're all stacked on top of an endless turtle tower. These two answers serve the same purpose of answering nothing.

 

[Charmonium]

I sort of like the turtles. But even in that case, there's always the possibility of different perspectives.

For example,I like the idea of representing "infinity" by having the turtles shrink (parallax) into an indiscernible smudge. That's probably how most humans think about infinity - if they do at all.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

Virtually everything Humans know, or will ever know or can ever imagine is but a speck of dust in the Library of Reality.

The entirety of the Universe as Humans think they know it is smaller than whatever makes up a Quark.

 

[Paratus]

1. Sure it does. A simulation can explain it, as I've stated above. Turtles don't do shit but eat, shit and replicate, just saying "its turtles all the way down" is just silly nonsense. Don't be coy. Of course it being a simulation does not answer the question "well who and what are the simulators", but as I said already we need to try and find a flaw, opening in the simulation, whatever you want to call it, to get the bigger truth.

2. Are you using some limits to data transfer in the laws the simulators put into effect for our simulated universe to try and describe what lies outside our simulated universe and what its laws might be? LOL, come on man...

A simulation explains our corner of reality it does not explain why the simulators universe exists. In your hypothesis our simulation exist in that universe which means that the simulators universe is ours too.

Also math is math. Their simulation of our universe has to model the simulated universe we interact with. Their model has to account for the estimated 10^80 particles we see, all the data to describe those particles, and the data to describe the interactions between those particles. Just to store the information about a few 100 electrons would take computer memory with more particles than the universe has. Now we could hypothesize that this isn’t an issue for the Simulators but we very quickly leave “it’s turtles all the way down” to “God Did It” by attributing god like powers to the Simulators.

Universe as Simulation is a hypothesis and if you want to treat it that way it is science. If you are accepting it on faith then it’s not.

 

[dank69]

A simulation explains our corner of reality it does not explain why the simulators universe exists. In your hypothesis our simulation exist in that universe which means that the simulators universe is ours too.

Also math is math. Their simulation of our universe has to model the simulated universe we interact with. Their model has to account for the estimated 10^80 particles we see, all the data to describe those particles, and the data to describe the interactions between those particles. Just to store the information about a few 100 electrons would take computer memory with more particles than the universe has. Now we could hypothesize that this isn’t an issue for the Simulators but we very quickly leave “it’s turtles all the way down” to “God Did It” by attributing god like powers to the Simulators.

Universe as Simulation is a hypothesis and if you want to treat it that way it is science. If you are accepting it on faith then it’s not.

Our brains do things that regular computers can't. Quantum computing does thing regular computers and brains can't do, and vice versa. Theoretically a civilization that has mastered the creation and application of all three along with maybe other technologies we have not discovered yet can maybe solve the issues you raise. Especially quantum computing from what little I know of it. Maybe everything is lazy loaded only when observed and garbage collected when not.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

They're out there. Calling. Waiting.

A mysterious object 1 billion light-years away is sending out a 'heartbeat' radio signal from deep space

Business Insider|17 minutes ago
Astronomers detected a pulse of radio waves, called a fast radio burst, in a faraway galaxy. The signal lasted 1,000 times longer than average bursts.

 

[Paratus]

They're out there. Calling. Waiting.

A mysterious object 1 billion light-years away is sending out a 'heartbeat' radio signal from deep space

Business Insider|17 minutes ago
Astronomers detected a pulse of radio waves, called a fast radio burst, in a faraway galaxy. The signal lasted 1,000 times longer than average bursts.

It's never aliens until it's aliens.

 

[snoopy7548]

It's never aliens until it's aliens.

Chances are they're dead if it's that far away; maybe they were sending out a warning...

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

Still going .....


Science News // 3 hours ago

45 years after launch, NASA's Voyager probes still blazing trails billions of miles away


Aug. 19 (UPI) -- Forty-five years ago, NASA launched the first part of its most ambitious deep space mission in its history -- Voyager 2, which is still communicating with scientists on Earth following a 12 billion-mile journey.

 

[Captante]

whatever makes up a Quark