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This_Username_42 t1_j1v5b5k wrote

Reply to comment by kjpmi in do we really believe aliens can decode the golden records by Calm-Confidence8429

Well, omoamumao wasn’t sending any signals out — voyager does (or did?) send out a radio signal

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tritonice t1_j1v5t92 wrote

Both Voyagers communicate with Earth almost daily still to this day. Hopefully until at least 2025, but we are in the endgame on both.

The transmitters are 20w, and even if they could transmit for eternity, it currently takes a dish 70m in diameter to "hear" (they can array two 34m dishes still, but it's getting very hard even with that setup). Bad weather at a DSN site (Autstralia is the only one that has line of sight to V2) can actually wash out the signal. You literally could not hear its signals at light year distances because it would be too weak and blend with background noise.

Follow @nascom1 on Twitter. He is the source of most of this and is excellent!!

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Nerull t1_j1v6497 wrote

Voyager will be completely dead tens of thousands of years before it reaches the proximity of another star..

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kjpmi t1_j1vfprf wrote

In hundreds of thousands of years when they actually pass any potentially habitable star systems, they will have no longer been able to broadcast any signals for hundreds of thousands of years.

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GuacamoleFrejole t1_j1vdyd4 wrote

But Voyager is/was sending RF signals, which a highly technologically advanced civilization may have abandoned eons ago.

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