woberto Report This Comment
Date: October 25, 2012 10:42AM

Scale, who needs it?
Saturn is 9.5 AU's from the Sun, Neptune is 30 AU's from the Sun.
Voyager1 has travelled just over 100 AU's and the nearest star is almost 271,000au's away. The oort cloud extends about 50,000 au's and although hypothetical it is only then you can say you've left our solar system. humans will be extinct before voyager reaches anything interesting..
quoth bill bryson; "pluto may be the last object marked on schoolroom charts but the solar system doesn’t end there. in fact, it isn’t even close to ending there. we won’t get to the solar system’s edge until we have passed through the oort cloud, a vast celestial realm of drifting comets… far from marking the outer edge of the solar system, as those schoolroom maps so cavalierly imply, pluto is barely one 50,000th of the way. of course we have no prospect of such a journey. based on what we know now and can reasonably imagine, there is absolutely no prospect that any human being will ever visit the edge of our own solar system — ever. it is just too far"

fossil_digger Report This Comment
Date: October 25, 2012 12:54PM

but when V-ger comes back.......................



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 25/10/2012 12:55PM by fossil_digger.

quasi Report This Comment
Date: October 25, 2012 02:21PM

Damn, fossil, I was gonna say that.

woberto Report This Comment
Date: September 15, 2013 07:36AM

I disagree with this...
[earthsky.org]
...I mean, that the fuck would NASA know?