What One Hit From a Grain of Sand Will Do To Voyager 1

Voyager 1 is being hit by interstellar dust. At roughly 10.5 miles per second, even microscopic particles can vaporize on impact and create tiny clouds of plasma that Voyager can actually detect. Scale that impact up to a grain of sand, and the energy becomes comparable to a bullet. So why has Voyager survived for almost 50 years without a shield? And what are the chances that something larger eventually hits it? In this video we follow Voyager 1 beyond the planets and into interstellar space to calculate what a high-speed dust impact would really do, how much danger the spacecraft faces from larger objects, what happens when it eventually enters the Oort Cloud, and what is actually most likely to end the mission. But the strangest part comes after Voyager goes silent. With almost no weather, oxygen, liquid water or thermal cycling to destroy it, the spacecraft itself could remain intact for billions of years. Some estimates suggest parts of Voyager — including its Golden Record — may survive longer than life on Earth itself. The signal will disappear. The spacecraft may not. Subscribe to Insane Curiosity for more documentaries about Voyager, deep space, astronomy, physics and the strangest consequences of exploring the universe. -- DISCUSSIONS & SOCIAL MEDIA Commercial Purposes: [email protected] Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@insanecuriosity Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/insanecuriosity Instagram: https://instagram.com/insanecuriositythereal Twitter: https://twitter.com/insanecurio Facebook: https://facebook.com/InsaneCuriosity Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/insane-curiosity-46b928277/ Our Website: https://insanecuriosity.com/ -- Credits: Ron Miller, Mark A. Garlick / MarkGarlick.com ,Elon Musk/SpaceX/ Flickr https://app.envato.com/music / https://artlist.io/ -- 0:00 Voyager Is Being Hit 0:46 The Instrument That Hears Collisions 2:24 When Dust Becomes a Bullet 4:55 Why Voyager Keeps Surviving 6:26 The Killers Are Real 8:35 The 30,000-Year Minefield 10:10 Rock vs. Radioactive Clock 11:29 What Happens After Voyager Dies 12:49 The 5-Billion-Year Survivor 13:58 The Part We Can Never Prove 16:16 Voyager Outlives Earth’s Biosphere -- #insanecuriosity #voyager1 #voyager