Voyager 1 moving beyond the solar system?

I wonder what it's like to be out there among the stars. Not just in the blackness of space where you can see tons of stars around you. I mean actually *among* the stars. Outside of the solar system. This idea used to be relegated to the realm of science fiction.

But maybe not anymore.

Before my latest blogging hiatus, I posted something on the Voyager space probes. I continue to marvel that these machines, built and launched in the 1970s, are still out there today transmitting back to Earth. Voyager 1 is the furthest out there right now, and a radio signal from it takes over 17 hours to reach Earth.

And boy are its arms tired!

Ummmm, anyway...

There's new stuff going on with the Voyager 1 probe. It's very possible that it has finally entered interstellar space, completely free of any gravitational pull put out by our sun, and completely at the mercy of those gravity and energy waves that inhabit that area.

Thankfully, the article's science isn't too heavy, and the graphs that it shows really illustrate why they think the probe may have left the solar system completely. The massive dive bomb of low-energy particle detections has to be seen to be believed.

I greatly anticipate hearing for sure whether it has. Our first interstellar voyager, out there where the aliens can really find it, and then find us. Isn't that the coolest thing?

I know this may not be of interest to all of you. I'm posting this for those science nerds among us (hi, Dawnie!!!!)

Let's just hope that the probe doesn't run into this guy.

That would be bad news for all of us, I think.