Ants, rock stars, and wet dreams

Signals from Earth now take 23 hours and 9 minutes to reach Voyager 1—and just as long to return. That’s nearly a full day round-trip to communicate with our most distant spacecraft! Coming up: In January 2027, Voyager 1 is expected to reach a new cosmic milestone—one light-day (about 25.9 billion km) from the Sun—right on time for the 50th anniversary of its launch. While it may still be operational, engineers might need to shut down some instruments due to declining power from its aging radioisotope source. To put things into perspective: the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.24 light-years away. At its current speed, it would take Voyager 1 roughly 74,000 years to get there. An incredible legacy of exploration—still writing history across the stars.

The stars stretch endlessly across the cosmos. Are we the only ones watching... or just the only ones who know? 👁️

5 stars of pain

Since launching in 1977, Voyager 1 has traveled farther than any human-made object, crossing into interstellar space in 2012. Now, over 15 billion miles from Earth, it’s detecting something remarkable: a low-frequency “cosmic hum”. This eerie sound isn’t audible to human ears—it's a series of plasma waves picked up by Voyager’s instruments. These waves are generated when the solar wind—charged particles from the Sun—collides with the interstellar medium, the thin soup of gas and dust between stars. 📡 What’s causing the hum? Solar Wind Interactions: Collisions between solar particles and interstellar gas create ripples in space plasma. Cosmic Clues: The hum reveals key info about the density, composition, and magnetic fields of the space between stars. Thanks to Voyager 1’s Plasma Wave Science instrument, scientists now have a new way to explore the unseen structure of our galaxy. ✨ In a region no spacecraft has ever reached, Voyager is still sending whispers from the void—and we're listening.