Talk:Voyager 1
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40,000 years
For what it's worth, there was a minor kerfuffle over an edit which claimed than 40,000 years was nowhere near enough time to reach Gliese 445, so the number was arbitrarily multiplied by 10. The conclusion was false (at 17 km/s, indeed, it won't travel 17 light years in 40,000 years, but Gliese 445 will be much closer in 40,000 years). I got confused looking at the wrong diffs when I restored an earlier version. I missed that User:The Grid had already backed that edit out along with a bunch of copyedits, and unfortunately reverted his changes as well. Mea culpa, bad editing on my part. Tarl N. (discuss) 20:31, 27 January 2026 (UTC)
Solar wind detection after solar-wind detector lost
(this was discussed earlier, but since that discussion is 15 years old I thought better of de-archiving it)
This article says the solar wind detector was lost in 1990, and that solar wind had to be inferred from other data from then on:
- "The issue would not be resolved until other data became available, since Voyager 1's solar-wind detector ceased functioning in 1990. This failure meant that termination shock detection would have to be inferred from the data from the other instruments on board."
Then, later in the article it says:
- "It was confirmed on December 13, 2010, that Voyager 1 had passed the reach of the radial outward flow of the solar wind, as measured by the Low Energy Charged Particle device. ... Since June 2010, detection of solar wind had been consistently at zero, providing conclusive evidence of the event."
Taking the two statements (that the solar wind detector stopped working in 1990, and that solar wind detection was at zero in 2010) out of context, one might wonder how solar wind could be measured in 2010.
I gather that in 2010 they were using the Low Energy Charged Particle Device to indirectly measure solar wind. This seems to be confirmed by the cited source saying "The bulk velocity of the plasma in the radial–transverse plane has been determined using measurements of the anisotropy of the convected energetic ion distribution." - which to my lay understanding seems to be describing data from the Low Energy Charged Particle device.
First of all, is my interpretation correct?
And if so, to avoid this confusion, can we add something like the bold text to this line?:
- "Since June 2010, detection of solar wind (as determined by data from the Low Energy Charged Particle device) had been consistently at zero, providing conclusive evidence of the event."