Originally published at: Engineers fixed Voyager space probe's mysterious glitch but found another that's even stranger | Boing Boing
…
6 Likes
23 Likes
the computer that corrupted the data hasn’t worked at all in years and they have no idea why Voyager suddenly started using it again.
a cosmic ray flipped a bit and caused it to reboot …or y’know: aliens
26 Likes
things get a little bit wobbly as you appraoch the crystal sphere…
and…
Its Probably Aliens…
19 Likes
Space the final frontier.
16 Likes
To boldly probe where nobody has probed before.
5 Likes
It takes 3 months to send or receive a signal from voyager. And I thought my connection was slow.
19 Likes
Where it is now, Voyager is the alien. If it encounters anyone, they’re the locals.
20 Likes
Selecting the auto-update option was an error.
9 Likes
21 Likes
Also…
is currently 14.5 billon miles from Earth in interstellar space.
15 Likes
I was just a nerdy kid when the Voyagers were launched, and it’s mind-blowing that Voyager 1 is still going, has actually left our solar system, and is somehow sending data back. SO COOL.
30 Likes
I don’t know if they used ECC memory or not. If not, then they should have.
5 Likes
4 Likes
Never heard that. The actual time it takes for radio signals to cross that 15 billion mile distance is about 22 hours. Is the 3 months you’re referring to just how often they’ve got time scheduled on the radio telescopes?
6 Likes
I am right with you - as a kid I poured over the National Geographic editions with Voyager I and II images. Now as my own human hardware and operating system ages - I love to think about our mechanical wonder still sailing away into infinity.
6 Likes
I remember bringing in Lego models to show my grade-school class which I’d painstakingly assembled from the National Geographic articles. In college, I hung up the new pictures just sent back from the outer planets. I’ve never given up on those probes.
“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.”
4 Likes
they would have needed 3bits extra for every 4, and there’s only 68kb total. it’d have wasted a lot of what they had.
( with so little memory, to record data they rely on tape drives. and transmission is 160 bits per second! )
they were really pushing the envelope of what was possible. still are really.
all that said… i am confused about the software problems. i mean i thought there were no bugs in space. what would bugs even eat?
5 Likes
7 Likes
Clearly, aliens meddled in the production of Star Trek, the Movie, making it an eye-rollingly trite and dull retread of a not that great early episode. Now, when they’ve actually achieved their long term goal off reprogramming Voyager in order to destroy humanity, geeks who would normally be our first line of defense are so totally bored with the same tired plot that they can’t stir up the interest to be wary.
4 Likes
