Today in 2012, Voyager 1 officially leaves our Solar System and enters interstellar space.
Currently, the probe is 15 Billion miles away from Earth, making it the furthest man made object ever sent into the cosmos. It will continue to send back data to NASA until 2025 when it’s onboard fuel cells run dry. It will then drift on through space for the rest of time.
Onboard, it is carrying a solid gold disc that contains:
• Greetings in 55 languages from ancient Sumerian to Modern English, Mandarin and even Welsh.
• A collection of the earth sound including rain, thunder to a baby’s cry and a jet engine.
• 90 minutes of music from traditional folk music from around the world to classical greats like Mozart and Beethoven to Chuck Berry.
• 116 images of earth, humans, nature, animals and our Solar System are also included.
As the disc is solid gold, it shouldn’t decay meaning the information will be preserved for eternity, this could well be the only artefact in the distant future that humans ever existed if we don’t make it for whatever reason.
I did (pardon the pun) also find it a bit far fetched but after a google search I found the following. I'm now fascinated by both the Voyager programmes, I didn't realise they were launched such a long time ago back in 1977.
Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, as part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System and the interstellar space beyond the Sun's heliosphere. It was launched 16 days after its twin, Voyager 2. It communicates through the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) to receive routine commands and to transmit data to Earth. Real-time distance and velocity data are provided by NASA and JPL. At a distance of 164.0 AU (24.5 billion km; 15.2 billion mi) from Earth as of August 2024, it is the most distant human-made object from Earth.
Voyager 1's trajectory seen from Earth, diverging from the ecliptic in 1981 at Saturn and now heading towards the constellation Ophiuchus.
NASA website shows their real time locations updated every 5 minutes.
From the department of “They sold that for how much?!” comes today’s story, about an Italian artist who, for the cool price of €15,000 ($18,300), recently auctioned an artwork that is… well, nothing.
The 67-year-old artist Salvatore Garau sold an “immaterial sculpture”—which is to say that it doesn’t exist.
To be fair, the artist might disagree on conceptual grounds. For Garau, the artwork, titled lo sono (which translates to “I am”), finds form in its own nothingness. “The vacuum is nothing more than a space full of energy, and even if we empty it and there is nothing left, according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, that nothing has a weight,” he told the Spanish news outlet Diario AS. “Therefore, it has energy that is condensed and transformed into particles, that is, into us.”
The pre-sale estimate valued the piece between €6,000-9,000, according to AS, but competing bidders pushed the price tag to €15,000.
The lucky buyer went home with a certificate of authenticity and a set of instructions: the work, per Garau, must be exhibited in a private house in a roughly five-by-five-foot space free of obstruction.
It's a wonderful building and only a 5 minute drive from my house and yet i've only been there once (inside) and that was with school , i've been a couple of times but it was always closed pre internet , what struck me was the old graffiti on the bridge , Tom was ere 1806
It's a wonderful building and only a 5 minute drive from my house and yet i've only been there once (inside) and that was with school , i've been a couple of times but it was always closed pre internet , what struck me was the old graffiti on the bridge , Tom was ere 1806
@stokefc we need you to visit the place with your spirit level and take a photo of the bubble as that fireplace definitely looks wonky to me
The United States Energy Department has noted that nuclear energy helps to keep the air in America clean and reported that the country avoided more than 471 metric tons of carbon emissions in 2022. That was equal to removing 100 million cars from the road!
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Today in 2012, Voyager 1 officially leaves our Solar System and enters interstellar space.
Currently, the probe is 15 Billion miles away from Earth, making it the furthest man made object ever sent into the cosmos. It will continue to send back data to NASA until 2025 when it’s onboard fuel cells run dry. It will then drift on through space for the rest of time.
Onboard, it is carrying a solid gold disc that contains:
• Greetings in 55 languages from ancient Sumerian to Modern English, Mandarin and even Welsh.
• A collection of the earth sound including rain, thunder to a baby’s cry and a jet engine.
• 90 minutes of music from traditional folk music from around the world to classical greats like Mozart and Beethoven to Chuck Berry.
• 116 images of earth, humans, nature, animals and our Solar System are also included.
As the disc is solid gold, it shouldn’t decay meaning the information will be preserved for eternity, this could well be the only artefact in the distant future that humans ever existed if we don’t make it for whatever reason.
15 Billion miles away from Earth
Seriously? Wow.
Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, as part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System and the interstellar space beyond the Sun's heliosphere. It was launched 16 days after its twin, Voyager 2. It communicates through the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) to receive routine commands and to transmit data to Earth. Real-time distance and velocity data are provided by NASA and JPL. At a distance of 164.0 AU (24.5 billion km; 15.2 billion mi) from Earth as of August 2024, it is the most distant human-made object from Earth.
Voyager 1's trajectory seen from Earth, diverging from the ecliptic in 1981 at Saturn and now heading towards the constellation Ophiuchus.
NASA website shows their real time locations updated every 5 minutes.
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/where-are-they-now/
The NASA main website for the Voyager programme.
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1
From the department of “They sold that for how much?!” comes today’s story, about an Italian artist who, for the cool price of €15,000 ($18,300), recently auctioned an artwork that is… well, nothing.
The 67-year-old artist Salvatore Garau sold an “immaterial sculpture”—which is to say that it doesn’t exist.
To be fair, the artist might disagree on conceptual grounds. For Garau, the artwork, titled lo sono (which translates to “I am”), finds form in its own nothingness. “The vacuum is nothing more than a space full of energy, and even if we empty it and there is nothing left, according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, that nothing has a weight,” he told the Spanish news outlet Diario AS. “Therefore, it has energy that is condensed and transformed into particles, that is, into us.”
The pre-sale estimate valued the piece between €6,000-9,000, according to AS, but competing bidders pushed the price tag to €15,000.
The lucky buyer went home with a certificate of authenticity and a set of instructions: the work, per Garau, must be exhibited in a private house in a roughly five-by-five-foot space free of obstruction.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/italian-artist-auctioned-off-invisible-sculpture-18300-literally-made-nothing-1976181
https://www.exploringgb.co.uk/blog/little-moreton-hall-tudor-gem-in-cheshire
Nuclear Energy keeps our air clean
The United States Energy Department has noted that nuclear energy helps to keep the air in America clean and reported that the country avoided more than 471 metric tons of carbon emissions in 2022. That was equal to removing 100 million cars from the road!