Archived After 37 years, Voyager 1 has fired up its trajectory thrusters (arstechnica.com)
submitted ago by TehBestestRetard
Posted by: TehBestestRetard
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Archived After 37 years, Voyager 1 has fired up its trajectory thrusters (arstechnica.com)
submitted ago by TehBestestRetard
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[–] [deleted] 0 points 3 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago
[–] Master_Foo 0 points 4 points 4 points (+4|-0) ago (edited ago)
It's because of Jupiter's gravitational pull that makes it so safe to pass near it. The planet has essentially been vacuuming it's area for billions of years cleaning the debris. Anything that doesn't fall down the gravity well is tidied up by consolidating all particles into it's rings or it's Lagrange points.
So, yeah, you are correct in your assumption. There should be more debris around Jupiter. There IS more debris around Jupiter. But, Jupiter was nice enough to put everything away neatly in his closet.
[–] eatmorealmonds 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Nope, no science here other than a layperson. I wonder of these things also Wildebeest, yet it's pretty damn empty out there on the whole plus the universe seems to love our adventures, doesn't it (for the time being at least, until that Gamma ray makes its beeline for us)
[–] Aged 3 points 1 point 4 points (+4|-3) ago (edited ago)
The chance of Voyager meeting any kind of debris near a planet randomly would be of one in thousands, and we can use telescopes to see these things from here and make it avoid it. Outside in the galaxy? Voyager has better chances at winning in at lottery. Hell, it has a better chance of intelligent life actually finding it, realize it isn't a natural object but made by someone, and try to retrieve it. Space is very big.
[–] theoldguy 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Something the size of a marble traveling at 100k mph would pretty much destroy Voyager and we wouldn't have any chance of seeing something so small and so far away.
[–] [deleted] 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
[–] Master_Foo 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
You aren't wrong. I'm not correcting you. I'll just add that conservation of momentum will consolidate anything that doesn't fall into the gravity well into rings, like Saturn, and to a lesser extent Jupiter. So, there is quite a lot of material floating around, but, it's been packed into a stable orbit in a single plane, which makes the area of danger quite small.