Light On Dark Water

Although there is still some argument about it, many experts seem to believe that the Voyager 1 spacecraft has left the solar system. In the absence of a marker out there with a sign saying "You are now leaving the sphere of Sol," there are subtle differences in the relative emptiness of space that distinguish solar from interstellar space, and Voyager is detecting them. 

I don't think it's very likely that we'll ever go very far into space, and I strongly suspect there's really nowhere to go. (Yes, I know all those probability-based arguments about life on other planets, and maybe they're right, but they can't be anything more than conjecture.) Still, there's something a little awe-inspiring about this: that little bit of metal, sailing and sailing and sailing, at what would be an impossibly high speed on earth but is extremely slow in cosmic terms.

The probe has spent 36 years travelling 12 billion miles. A quick and very rough calculation: a light year is about 6 trillion miles, so that's about 1/500 of a light year. So 36 x 500 = 18,000 years to travel one light year. The nearest star (not counting the sun, obviously) is 4.2 light years away. That comes to a bit over 75,000 years. That may be longer than the human race (language, tools, and culture) as we know it has existed, although I'm sure there are widely divergent views on that.

I wonder how long Voyager will stay intact. Millions of years? I really don't know. In any case, I doubt that this is its future: