Voyager 1 Is Still Working, Which Raises Some Very Uncomfortable Questions About the Rest of Us
Every once in a while, reality accidentally tells the funniest joke imaginable. Not because someone intended it to be funny. Reality has never cared about our sense of humor. It simply arranges the facts in a way that makes you stare into the distance and whisper, "You've got to be kidding me." Take Voyager 1. NASA launched it in 1977. Jimmy Carter had just become president. Star Wars had only recently introduced audiences to lightsabers. Disco was alive, polyester was somehow considered fashionable, and people still believed they'd eventually own flying cars. Someone slid a spacecraft into the sky carrying computers so primitive that today's smartwatch would probably mistake them for a toaster. Yet here we are. Nearly half a century later, that little machine is still drifting through interstellar space—far beyond Pluto, beyond the planets, beyond the protective bubble of the Sun—quietly sending information back to Earth. Meanwhile, my laptop needs a software upd...
