Citation Needed - The Voyager Program

Episode Date: September 18, 2019

The Voyager program is an American scientific program that employs two robotic probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, to study the outer Solar System.[1] The probes were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Although their original mission was to study only the planetary systems of Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 2 continued on to Uranus and Neptune. The Voyagers now explore the outer boundary of the heliosphere in interstellar space; their mission has been extended three times and they continue to transmit useful scientific data. Neither Uranus nor Neptune has been visited by a probe other than Voyager 2.   Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

I mean, I thought it was okay, it just didn't wow me. So I feel the same way. I did like the Crystal Gems remix though. That was fun. Oh yeah, and that drift away song, that was so much fun. Oh, that can be so good. They're both good, right?

Gentlemen, welcome to the future. Oh, Monday, it's Monday. Monday. Right, yeah, I just said a thing on my watch. I forgot about that. I mentioned it before. See now, that's yeah. I just said a thing on my watch about that. I forgot about that. You mentioned it before. See now that's smart.

I gotta get a... Well, what do you think? Well, I mean, I think you nailed all our sound equipment together in a ball and... Satellite. You're planning to fire it out the window at the yoga studio across the street. Launch it into space, but yes, so far good.

Using a slingshot, you've made from a sex swing and a field goal from a football field around the corner and provides launch mechanism otherwise, yeah. And it also isn't gonna work. So, yeah, not even a little bit. Sex swings can't handle that kind of look, right? Guys, come on, that's what everyone said about today's subject, the Voyager Space Program.

Oh, they very much did not. Yeah, they spent like a dozen years on it man. And look look what it's given us. Pictures of the moon, pictures of Mars, all cobbled together with a hope and a prayer. What? Not all those things that's no. We have from that. Nope you got all. Come on guys. In times like these people need something to bring them together. Yes, Voyager has given us some incredible scientific insight but it also brought us together as a nation.

It reminds us how small we are. It reminds us that there's something still left to see, left to explore, rather than our hatred of each other. And I just feel like now more than ever we need that. Sure. Why not? Yeah, go ahead. My vote was always yes.

I was just, I wanted to slay shot. Yeah. Was it? That, go ahead. My vote was always yes. I was just I wanted to sleep shot. Yeah, was it? That's the ticket Okay, that is what I thought would happen. I mean really yep I called it like before it happened I exactly what we figured we would happen. Yep. Yeah, three pigs It's just perfect. Yeah, move the studio pigs. It's just perfect. Move the studio again? Yep. All right, that's pretty much, I guess we're gonna have to do it again.

Start wrapping up the cables. Shoot it again! Can we shoot it again? Let's put anything in it. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed. Podcasts where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts. Because this is the internet and that's how it works now. Use a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts. This is the internet, and that's how it works now.

I'm Heath, and I'll be the agent Z for this interplanetary adventure. Joining me is our diverse team of men in white, first up. We have three men who put the fur in Fermi's paradox. See, so Tom and Eli. You know, as I get older, I also put the ache in the Drake equation. Fur, I wasn't the only one at that furry convention dress like a cat, but I was the only one who brought his own litter box. I thought that was rude. All right, you slip one little gift porn into the voyage or golden record,

and suddenly you're that guy at NASA. Okay, I see how we're doing this. What's your gift porn? Oh, please look that up here right now while I listen to you doing it. Looking it up. Am I gonna get in trouble for a little? I feel like this is gonna put me on a list or something.

I'm gonna use my work computer. I'm not looking it up. Thank you, Tom. And also joining us moving right along. We also have a man who is not hiding chin fat with a beard Noah. Oh, that's a little harsh. Fully half of you guys aren't hiding it at all. I mean, it's just, it's just fuzzy.

It's all really. That half. Yeah, you guys. If I get my beard long enough, I'd head to my belly fat too, motherfucker. Really that half guy you guys I get my beard long enough. I'd had my belly fat to motherfucker If I could if I could have a love handle beard I'd have a sweet Love handle Burn's really Just comb from the belly button

It just be sharp No, no, no, no, just calm from the belly button out. And you'll be fine. No. It just be sharp. Like, I'd be like Freud's love handles. That'd be awesome. We're all overweight most of us. Anyway, let's get right into the story. Tell us, Tom, what person place thing, concept, phenomenon, or event?

Are we gonna be talking about today? Well, today we will be talking about the time we fed all the poor people. Now, I'm just kidding. We'll be talking about something much more important. The Voyager Space Program. That's fucking hilarious. Super funny. Super funny. We spent so much money that you could buy lots of food. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. My space program as well. We should, we should definitely pick the space program a bar for spending useless money. Yeah, you see a binary choice.

Yeah, exactly. It's either the space people. The program or its poor people. Those are two options. That's it. We can't just cut a door of dollars. It's got to go in one of the fucking piles. I mean, who knows where else we could cut, you know.

I mean, she's not depleted could cut, you know, I mean she pleaded uranium anti tank rounds those Don't pay attention to that. We locked in that's locked in and so are all the trips tomorrow. I go none of that Those are entitlements Those are official entitlements that's locked in that's correct. All right. I hate all of you I just hate all you. I just want to get's correct. All right, I hate all of you. I just hate all of you. I just want to get that on a record early. I hate all of you.

Okay, continue on. Keep going. The preface to the SSA. Well, Cecil, you think space travel is real. This is fun. Are you ready to use fancy words to confuse us into believing that conspiracy? Oh, he, you don't need help being confused.

Come on, buddy. Oh, he, you don't need help being confused. Okay. That's so what was the manager's face problem? It was about one-eighths is expensive as our annual feeding the poor people. Fuck all of you. Fuck all of you. You anti science. Fuck. I hate you. Someone doing this. I'm doing the poor people anyway, I'm not actually I'm not actually reading this to you I'm reading this to the science-minded members of our audience right now, okay? So you guys can listen along if you want but I'm talking You who care about science that's who I'm talking real quick blanket Boon nerd just for the whole thing

Okay, all right, okay Okay, where's your missions? I can't even read this. I so hard to even read this I was so excited when I wrote this you guys just pop the bubble So I'm excited with you see you and I will be excited for this episode god damn it Oh my god you guys are doing all the work on this group project. You're gonna be amazing. Oh, I'm sorry, I were worst episode. All right, okay. So the Voyager missions were kind of amazing.

We had this really unquenchable spirit of discovery when it came to space exploration in the 60s and 70s. And Voyager is really a product to that. It's a story about us dipping our toe into the cosmic pool and it's a story of hope that we aren't alone in the 60s and 70s, and for a year, there's really a product to that. It's a story about us dipping our toe into the cosmic pool, and it's a story of hope that we aren't alone in the universe. And about how Stanley Kubrick built Neptune out of paper mache, so.

This is soundstage. This is real talented. I don't know, man, am I the only one hoping that we are alone in the universe? Like, I mean, I feel like limiting our shamed to one planet can only do us good at this point. I, we will limit our shamed one planet. Don't worry. The ocean god has an entire planet of his own.

You don't do space. Okay. The origin of the Voyager missions actually began in a different space program. Mariner. Mariner started in 1962 and ran until 1973 with the purpose of sending robotic interplanetary probes to Mars, Venus, and Mercury. According to Wikipedia, quote, the program included a number of firsts, including the first planetary flyby, the first planetary orbiter, and the first gravity assist maneuver.

Also, included, the first guy to shit his pants in space, but Wikipedia keeps taking my edits down because they're afraid of the truth. Yeah. Like the fact that they were unmanned missions might also factor into a number. I could be the fear of the truth, too. Just teach the cosy dimensional space. Just Eli shitting.

Thank you. I'm still waiting to send that probe to Uranus, but I'm it's any failure missions for years. I haven't gotten past the outer ring though. Oh, so I'm gonna pronounce Uranus correctly through the rest of the session. I am not gonna mention

that it's just funny. It may ruin your Uranus jokes. I'm sorry. I had to re-pronounce those for you. I'm sorry for the joy of the audience. Yeah, I'm gonna turn all my stuff into P jokes. That's fun If you'd like to purchase your boon nerd slash Stuff so you can pee from your butt That's relevant. That all made sense. Go ahead, Cecil. There were 10 planned Mariners Space missions and seven of the 10 were successful. They were all

shot into space with Atlas rockets and they each used solar panels for power, the equipment ranged for each mission, but most of them had a standard complement, which could include several of the following sensors. Ultraviolet, foetimeter, cosmic dust, solar plasma, trapped radiation, cosmic rays, magnetic fields, camera with digital tape recorder and celestial mechanics. Really? We're just not gonna talk about the fact that every other item on that list is made up ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha press a bureaucrat. Well, we could use this to determine the movement of the planet by seeing how far away it is from them.

It's a ruler we hold it in our slangs. So they had to use Atlas Rockets. Because before that, people just kept kicking fucking sand into the face of the other rockets. It was like a whole hell. It's a whole program. The three that didn't make it were Mariner 1, which was destroyed about five minutes after lift off

when its rocket malfunctioned. Mariner 3 was useless because its nose-faring didn't jettison. Okay, yeah, well maybe if everyone would stop looking right at it, be able to stage right, concentrate a little. And Mariner 8 was lost on launch as well. Suspect. Really? No Jewish astronauts, any of those days very convenient.

And Rockadfield does burn that, huh? Of the seven functioning probes in the Mariner program, six are in Helio-centric orbit and Mariner nine is still in aerosentric orbit around Mars, but it's predicted to make planet fall in 2022 when we crown Jared Kushner as the new prince, I think is when that happened. Yeah. Marinor was expected to continue with what was called the Grand Tour Program.

The idea was that we would send out four probes to the outer planets to visit Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto, and the other two would visit Jupiter and Uranus. The problem is Uranus. Why wouldn't they mention Neptune there? That's weird, isn't it? I'm just saying. This isn't what we went with.

You go to all that, why would you just skip? That's fine. Take the problem. The problem in the early 70s, it had an estimated cost of about a billion dollars so it was canceled. They're just like, you nerds want a billion dollars for your stupid fucking thing.

No, we just spent 20 billion for a nuke on a giant slingshot for shooting down other nukes. Absolutely not, goodbye to yourself. God damn it. US government's like the Cokehead dad who can't give his kid lunch money because he just bought a kilo. He's like, no, that's, ask me.

No, I did it all. They instead decided to send only two probes to the outer planets and the program's name was changed to Voyager. Yeah, which ended up only costing the same billion dollars or same billion dollars. That's the great thing about all the NASA stories is they're smarter than us, so all of their stories always end up with, and then we tricked you idiots into giving us the money anyway.

Always. 100% of the time. Don't worry, all the poor people are in outer space. We're going to feed them with this rocket. See now I like the story better. We put the poor people where they're at. Jupiter sure does look Muslim take To shoot in Mexican babies

You know what now we're gonna separate further than that Felix bomb gardener just jumps and hits a wall three quarters of the way down That's an excellent reference we don't we don't get a lot of Felix Baumgart. Yeah, that was the Red Bull reference. Everybody didn't get that Google feelings Baumgart. YouTube it. Don't Google it. Yes, absolutely. Video. Yeah. These would not be the first probes to visit Jupiter and Saturn in 1973 and 74. We launched Pioneer 10 and 11 to visit those two planets and they would continue out into space.

They were fitted with the advanced technology the time and we did get some good data from these missions, but it was limited. So there was still a lot of unanswered questions about the outer planets and we hoped to voyage your wood answers. Sailing around the outside of the gas giant. All right. What's in for all? Are you Uranus or Uranus?

What's which one? What's your name? What, they were limited to the advanced technology of the early 19th set. We basically learned what, that these planets were mostly round-ish. It's 2019. I still lose cell reception twice on my way to work.

There had also been some good advancement in technology in the intervening years between the launch of Mariner and the Voyager program. So these probes were redesigned and fitted with different and better tech. Let's get in that crazy. The computers at the time had 16 bits of RAM. Wow. They ran about. We could just name all those numbers right now.

We could do that. And it ran about 80,000 instructions per second. And iPhone 6 for reference has a gigabyte of RAM and can do about 3.36 billion instructions per second. Yeah. That was a big upgrade though. The eight-bit Mariner had basically just a guy blowing on the spaceship through a shirt to try to get started.

Jam in a second Mariner on top of the first one. You just can't say that. You just can't say that. There's not even any surprises here. I mean, like you get a perfectly good Mariner. A couple of years later suddenly you have to upgrade if you want any part of the fucking thing to work. This guy's all worth black turtlenecks and die of cancer too. That's right. thing to work. This guy's all worth black turtlenecks and die of cancer too. They could have gone

with the iVoidger, but then you need the proprietary launch pad. All the fucking buttons are on the wrong side of the screen. Huge pain in the ass, not worth it. The spacecrafts were about a ton each. About one-sixth of that ton was scientific instruments. The main body was a large di shantano, which was attached to a housing. The housing had three large arms that unfolded after the launch. One had a generator, and another had several sensors, and the third housed a low-field magnetometer. Attached to the outside of the craft

was the Voyager Golden Record, and we'll talk about that later. The sensor array that was on the ship had a wide and narrow angle cameras. This device was probably the most important for marketing the information because it was the one thing that non-scientists

could understand pretty pictures. Right. Look at that. Pale blue pixel. It's interesting. A radio science. A Cooper trooper. A radio science system, which was used to inspect, quote, ionosphere, atmospheres, masses,

gravity fields, densities, and the amount and size distribution of material in the Saturn rings and the ring dimensions, end quote. Yeah, also came in handy when they were near a speed trap. And infrared and ultraviolet spectrometer to collect temperature profiles and help determine the size of the particles in Saturn's rings. Obviously. A triaxial flux skate magnetometer.

I'm a pro-tune man, absolutely not. Those are just made up noises. You see, so just making up the fucking noises. Hold on, I gotta yell at my kids. Put down the god damn triaxial f**k's dude, magnetometer. Fuck you guys, fucking kids. I don't even know how to use it. They won't even get up to 88 miles per hour.

So they use the triaxial flux gate magnetometer to investigate the magnetic fields of Jupiter and Saturn and measure the solar wind in and out of the heliosphere. I'll explain what the heliosphere is later. Oh, that's the kids. Yeah, I think we all know what a triangle stargate magnet is. So it's not the least people's time going over that. We'll just skip straight to the helios. It keeps me here. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, plasma spectrometer to analyze the chemical composition of the planets. Like, uh, yeah. Oh, mostly discarded water bottles. Okay, guys, you were right. It is time to do something about that.

We should fix that now. A low energy charge particle instrument to determine the atomic makeup of the galactic cosmic radiation. A high energy charge particle instrument in case the Klingon's attack. A cosmic ray system, which also helped determine the atomic makeup of the galactic cosmic radiation, and we're vital to discovering when the probes cross the solar system termination shock out of the heliosphere. Again, more on those terms later. You'd need to know when that would happen.

Yeah, well, you do, but we're awarding termination shock is nowhere near cool enough to justify that term. That's fair. That's fair. Fair. Planetary radio astronomy investigation unit. Okay, well now law and order is just reaching. That's just, we don't even need that.

Yeah. Still on my Tivo, but it's not very good. Yeah. Dun dun dun dun. Is that what you guys hear that? Dun dun dun dun. They used it to study the radio emission signals from Jupiter. Photo polarimeter system to gather information on the surface texture and composition of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, a plasma wave system to study the electron density profiles at Jupiter and Saturn.

And all of this was just so that one guy at NASA can get the green pie piece in trivial person every fucking time. Well, they didn't have Wikipedia back then. What the hell are we gonna do? They also had a shits on other functions on these instruments, but these are the only ones my tiny brain partially understood. So that relate that to you. Okay, as a man who couldn't read the words

you wrote on his first try, I'd love for you to lower your standard. So, brain hood, you know, I'd be inclined against constructing anyone whose career path led them to being on this show to lower their standards. So the computing power we touched on briefly and I don't understand enough what's written here to explain much more than it was just super old tech.

One documentary mentioned that you carry that amount of computing power in your pocket and then he dramatically pulled on a key fob from his car and not a smart phone. Wow Wow NASA engineers walking away from the ship You just the alarm goes off The button's not working now We're not using the key open the fucking trunk. I'm absolutely not using the key. This is a spaceship

In space you can't hear your alarm scream. The spacecraft communicates with the earth with microwaves. Yeah, well, the first two failed because they weren't put in this side up. Yeah, we're real. And as time goes on, Like a hot pocket? Yeah, they turn off when they start popping. They put the whole voyager in one of those big things,

you put the hot pocket in and then they stood out in the space. The garbage? Actually, it does have blankets that wrap it, actually. Yeah, it does have solar blankets on it, yes. As time goes on, the data rate goes down because of the inverse square law. So we keep, so we keep that.

I'm glad to see that increasing the size of the dish in order to catch the weak signals. The probe did a fly by a Neptune in 1989 and we use the very large array in New Mexico, which is a group of 28 radio telescopes and it's in the film Cosmos, if you remember that film. Yeah, it's also the first scientific facility

in the United States to be named entirely in sarcasm. Very large array. Oh, Eli, look up some other radio telescope names you're gonna love. Fuck you, Dan. I know you slept with my wife. Tell us about it. It's pretty close. The Voyager uses radioactive material in a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. This device, quote, is an electrical generator that uses an array of thermocouples to convert

the heat released by the decay of a suitable radioactive material into electricity by the seaback effect. Seaback? Yeah. Seaback effect. Yes, that's a good one. That's one. That's one of the better effects.

The generator has no moving parts, end quote. And I looked at how this thing works, and it's beyond my tiny, primate thinking bits, they could have just said magic, and I looks at how this thing works and it's beyond my tiny Primate thinking bits they could have just said magic and I'd have been fine with it. That's fine Magic sees like literally thought that's what you just said. I have Well, okay, but let's be fair when you translate that back out of I'm justifying an $895 million dollar project speak it basically says it uses hot stuff in a thermometer to keep two conductors different temperatures. Still magic, you're gonna have to go back two more steps. Still too far, yep.

Oh, okay, by the way, the VLA was in the movie contact, not Cosmos, so just say it was an email. Oh, right, you are right. Yeah, sorry about that, you are right. Great film. I think it wasn't Cosmos too, but you're right. Oh, I'm sure it was me, yeah. But I was, you're right, I was referring to Concentration.

That's right, that's what I figured. The plan for Voyager missions was to launch the two craft in a planetary window. There's a certain alignment that the planets go through about every 175 years that makes this trip much easier because the planets were nearly as close as they can get to each other and the craft could use planetary gravity as a sort of slingshot to help them accelerate.

Voyager 1 was going to do the flybys of jazz. Everybody else is just wondering like when Mars is in retrograde, how many pigs do I hit with the yellow bird right now, right? That's not made up. That's like actually an awesome thing they figured out. Voyager 1 was going going to do flybys of Jupiter and Saturn and Saturn's moon Titan and then get yeeted out of the solar system. Voyager two would also visit Jupiter and Saturn and then head to Uranus and Neptune. just to recap, the flak-plum of the full perimeter of the Quantan's flak-plum, where it's bi-axle, flusk, pass-itor was connected to Zach Morris' cell phone and then shone to space to distract us from the CIA murdering Kennedy.

So let's take a quick break. Jesus Christ. He's a super-poven-up. Jesus Christ. CIA murdered Kennedy decade before. What's wrong with her? She's here. It's true.

Or so they would have you believe, Cecil. It's true. It's true. Or so they would have you believe, Cecil. It's true. Or so they would have you believe, Cecil. It's true. It's true.

It's true. Gentlemen, welcome to the very first meeting of the Voyager Space Mission. I want to begin by saying it is an honor to work with all of you. So, what uh... What do we got? Well, as I'm sure you're aware, it is 1976. So I was thinking, big ass ruler on it, right?

Maybe like, and then, well yeah, that's all I had, it was a big ruler, we could put a big, you know, big ruler, yeah, got it, so how do we wanna communicate with these, oh, right. Right. You communicate? I forgot about that. Are we supposed to do it? We're gonna get with the Satellite. Right.

You're gonna get me a cake? I forgot about that. Are we supposed to do it? I don't know. Hold on, I got it. I got it. This is a good idea. We put a really big beta max on it. And then like hope it drops a tape.

We'll go straight down. Yes, okay. Really big beta max, last forever. Got it, great idea, never. Oh, how about a geothermal plasma reader whose measurements future generations will read by spectrograpping the inside heat readings of the device itself? What the fuck did you say? Sorry, I'm in a Rubik's Cube, we could put a Rubik's Cube. Not even that, now that's sticking to the table.

Yeah, we don't want the satellite to get bored. Hi. I'm Carl Sagan. And if there's two things I love, it's beating my wife. Carl Sagan beat his wife, what? No, he didn't. He'll just keep saying it on all our shows. And the citation needed podcast, which is why I wanted to remind you to buy your tickets

for the citation needed live show on October 12th at 7 and 9 p.m. Why does he say the Carl Sagan thing? I don't even know. I don't know, I mostly just added it out. The game will be doing four episodes over two shows and tickets are going fast. So buy them while you can link in the show notes. Because he's like a super nice guy.

If you guys need it, he's like a super nice dude. So hop on over to the People's Improv Theater on October 12th, or I'll give you what I gave my wife, the back of my hand. No, he didn't. He's like, it's like the reason I'm an atheist. It's a weird joke, man. I know.

I'm Carl Sagan. Fuck you, Eli. I'm soundly him. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ And we're back. When we left off, Cecil was earning his paycheck from the space program conspiracy. And now we're about to launch in a Tari rocket

to take a picture in Neptune, because that would be super useful. You know what I do in that check in the memo section, I write, take that poor people. That's what I do. That's what I do. No one reads a check of poor people. Voyager 2 was launched first on August 20th of 1977, and Voyager 1 was launched less

than a month later on September 5th. Just switch the fucking names. What are you doing? They launched Voyager 2 first because it would arrive at both Jupiter and Saturn after Voyager 1 did, and a few days after the launch. On this day, in 1977, Voyager took an iconic photo of the Earth Moon system with the Earth in the lower right and the Moon in the upper left of the photo.

It's the first time we'd ever taken a photo of both of these entire planets in a single frame. Bay. Obviously, Bay. So I'm a fawfobarist first Instagram. That's crazy. Voyager came close enough to Jupiter to fire up the cameras on January 1979 and Voyager

2 in July of that year. April was 1979. They had to pack that guy with the big mustache and the flashy thing under the blanket. Both took a great deal of photos until they left the Jovian system. Voyager 1 in April and Voyager 2 in August, they discovered volcanic activity on Io, which is the first time any active volcano was viewed on any other celestial body. Okay, I call bullshit on that.

We've been taking pictures of eruptions over celestial bodies since they invented the camera, not the first time. You can see a little thing of vinegar and baking soda in the reflection of one of the guys glasses. It's a hoax. They did a time lapse of the atmosphere of Jupiter and prominent in this film is the giant red spot, it's just the largest storm in the solar system.

Yeah, and even that one isn't getting anywhere near Alabama. No matter how you draw it. The wrong side of the peninsula, yeah. They also discovered that Jupiter has a ring system and they discovered three moons, making those the first moons ever discovered via spacecraft. It was photos from these missions that led scientists to theorize that Europa, another Jovian moon, maybe covered with ice and have a liquid interior.

Yeah, and look, finding three moons seems impressive until you mentioned the 69 and counting that they missed, right? So that's what they really did was flew right by 69 fucking moons and didn't notice. They were texting and flying, that's what. Sure. In November of 1980 Voyager encountered Saturn. It studied the atmosphere of Saturn and they measured the rotation of the planet

to find out at length of its day. 10 hours, 39 minutes and 24 seconds if you were interested. Nailed it. Totally worth the money. I would have said like 11 hours minimum. Like that. Okay. Completely fucked up all over.

Okay, we get it, Heath. Yeah, that's fine. Okay, that's all about one alphapisode. Fuck you guys. Solid and so on. Fuck you guys. It's important stuff to know. It also, time 10, 39, 24.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. It also did a fly by a Titan Saturn's largest moon. It's Titan's larger than Mercury, which was known to have a dense atmosphere. The photos of the moon make it look like a smooth yellow ball. They did a lot of tests on the atmosphere and found it, quote, is largely nitrogen.

Minor components lead to the formation of methane They did a lot of tests on the atmosphere and found it, quote, is largely nitrogen. Minor components lead to the formation of methane and ethane clouds in a nitrogen rich organic smog." End quote. The data suggests a titan might be a planet that looks a lot like Earth with wind and rain, seas, rivers, and lakes, but it isn't water raining down. Instead, it's liquid methane at a temperature around 94 kelvin or a negative 180 Celsius. Okay, so where is sweater? I got it.

I got it. I'll do it. Foyager 2 made its closest approach to Saturn in late August of 1981. It measured Saturn's temperature. 70 Kelvin or it's between 70 Kelvin and a 143 Kelvin or about a negative 200 to negative 130 Celsius, and measured a pressure of its atmosphere when it was leaving Saturn and heading to its next destination. The camera platform locked up briefly, leaving us with this innuendo-filled explanation

of what happened next, quote, the mission engineers were able to fix the problem caused by an overuse that temporarily depleted its lubricant, the Voyager you probed was given the go ahead to explore the Eurean system and quote. Right guys, right? Cool. So Cecil clearly got bored and looked up colonoscopy

and it still worked for the essay. It's just used. If the Wikipedia for your science thing has the same sentence as the one for colonoscopy It's a science thing as a house. Okay. Just summarize like so you're saying that nerds sitting at their computer screen Had to wait 20 minutes before taking another whack Rule of thumb it turns out yeah Next stop for Voyager one at this point was the edge of the solar system

Voyager two had two more planets to fly by before it heads out into interstellar space. It enters the Uranus system in late January of 1986. And it gets pretty close. And it gets pretty close to the planet and it's fly by 81,000 kilometers, almost five times closer than the moon gets to the earth on average. Well Cecil, as the poster on my wall informs me, even if it missed, it landed among the stars. Yeah! All right, so a little personal note here, I am just old enough and nerdy enough that I remember the countdown to the pictures

of Uranus being released. Right, like I grew up with pictures of Jupiter and Saturn from Voyager were already out there in the world and we knew even less about Uranus going in. I was so crazy excited to see this brand new planet and then it was a fucking snowball. It's just the most boring ass white ball. Like I honestly didn't fully recover from that disappointment until New Horizons sent back its Pluto picks. Yeah, okay, well it might also hoax planet.

It was a little disappointing looking Noah, but there was a lot information we found, okay? I'll have you know, it discovered 11 unknown moons. It checks out the atmosphere and the effect of Uranus' axial tilt of 98 degrees, which means it spins on its side and no other planet does that. They discovered that the magnetic field of the planet

was misaligned from the rotational axis. They found Uranus to be a bit neppy, 60 Kelvin, or negative 213 Celsius, and they measured it's day, which was 17 hours and 14 minutes. Which is all the stuff they told you to distract from the fact that it was a fucking snowball. Okay. They also discovered Uranus had two undiscovered rings. That was kind of cool. That's right. Yeah

Uranus, my Nora and Uranus, my Jora Seasal, hey to be that guy, but you keep saying the Voyager discovered stuff the Voyager was two Atari's wrapped together with duct tape It first found slightly nerdy or Cecil and Noah figured out who interpret into the fucking weight of Mars or whatever. That's a lie! That guy is fucking due. Okay, all right, that's fair.

In August of 1989, 4-8-2 made its last stop in the solar system at Neptune. Yeah, at least that would have a decency to be a pleasant shade of blue. It's so upset. It discovered that the strongest winds in the solar system occur there, about 1300 miles an hour. And then at a similar super storm to Jupiter, they named it the giant dark spot. They measured its day, which was 16 hours long, and they found six new moons. They found that Neptune is also the coldest known planetary body in the solar

system at only 38 Kelvin or negative 235 Celsius. I can just say, I see it now like, great news everybody, our test confirm it. Neptune, very cold, it's very cold. Yeah, right, I mean, it's really far from the sun, so kind of figured, right? Did we not know it would be cold? Yeah, but now we know it, and there's like, there's six moons, six moons. Six moons, okay.

Not really sure what we do about that though. What we do is we know it. You know, now that's a mystery, and we've untangled. No, no, no, no, I get that. Like, six, okay, it's the number six. I get that, but how is this different from just like bar trivia? Wait, are you gonna lecture me about starving people again?

People starving like still? We can do more than one thing. Can we? Six moons. Six of them though. Yeah, six. It's very cold. Trivia night.

I'm on this episode on your protest Command C's are gonna go make fun We're gonna make a fucking astronomy Truscans whenever we want no one to give us any shit about To science the wanna be on it will be like no you can't be on our show fuck you No, you can't be on our show fuck you Then you fake a bunch of Twitter followers Well, I have to be it'll be wildly popular with all of smart people out there. Yeah, all the smart Americans will have a huge on this

You guys will have only the dumb Americans. No, nobody will listen to you. Yeah. OK. Joe Rogan. No. No. No. Now, both the probes where I had it out of the solar system and on their way to collect the last bit of data they were built for, to examine where our heliosphere meets

the interstellar space. The heliosphere is basically a giant bubble of plasma that surrounds our sun and solar system where the solar winds push back the interstellar space. The helosphere is basically a giant bubble of plasma that surrounds our sun and solar system where the solar winds push back the interstellar medium. It took over a decade, but in February of 2003 Voyager 1 entered the termination shock of the sun. Termination shock is this marks the point where the solar winds slows to subsonic speeds. In 2005 it entered the heliosheath, which is a turbulent area where the wind from the sun meets the interstellar winds, and on September 12th, in 2013, Voyager left our Heliosphere

for interstellar space. An idea that would be way more appealing three years and two months later. Like, yeah, boy did it, make the right fucking out. Take me with you. With Voyager, he made his, created something beautiful. We've essentially made a message in a bottle and threw it in a cosmic ocean.

Voyager one and two are, for the time being, the farthest man-made objects from us, and they'll continue on until they run into something which is very unlikely. I 100% believe that they bumped into each other already. Actually, just mathematically I apologize, I still believe in it. Yeah, when Kubrick was reloading him back into the van,

they'd dump try and do each other. Won't jostle the prop, Dave? Voyager one is better, no, but you're two is better. Bum, bum, bum. And they're flying off for billions of years. And in the unlikely event that some intelligence finds either of these craft,

they're gonna find a message attached to the outside of both of them, the Voyager Golden Record. Uptown Funk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that'd be an excellent song. If that's just literally a record or space oddity. Space oddity done by that astronaut who did it that would be amazing. Oh, there you go. The fuck you Eli.

Fuckin' on. Fuck you. Don't you fake. Fuck you. I joined it. I joined it in the chorus. Yeah, they're fucking, I heard it. I can hear it.

I could tell. I know hear it. I could tell. I know. The record is packed with information. They created a code with mathematical and physical contents for those who may find it. And it's covered in the case you break your way in. The cover of the record has a diagram with binary code explaining the proper speed the record should be played at. And it's expressed in the time period associated with the fundamental transition of the hydrogen

atom. It has a diagram of Earth's location, triangulating our planet using pulsars and uses binary code to show the frequency of the pulses. Oh my God, I just realized we spent a billion dollars to text all the aliens you up. Yeah, this. What the? Yeah, think of how many Southeast Asians we could have killed with that money.

I mean, that's the other thing we do with it. The record itself has 116 images, which included images of planets, chemical and biological diagrams, solar maps, mathematical definitions, physical unit definitions, people of all ages, mathematical definitions, physical unit definitions, people of all ages, wildlife buildings, cars, bridges, musical instruments, and my favorite. And images of three people in a demonstration of licking, eating, and drinking.

Licking. Licking, eating, and drinking. Which means we were going to send them a picture of eating and drinking, which means we were gonna send him a picture of eating and drinking and one guy was like hold on But what about fucking ice cream cones and like Sous-louder tops We're gonna be confused so we had licking in there. Yeah, listen You're looking at this image, but I am and it just solved the goddamn Fermi paradox at this image, but I am and it just solved the goddamn Fermi paradox. We've discovered an alien species, Mark Larr.

It seems to want to show us its vacation slides. You know, I've never met a market. The record had many natural sounds like waves, wind and thunder. It had animal sounds, greetings in 59 languages, and human sounds like footsteps, laughter, pet sounds. President Carter. That's a good record. That's a good one.

Thank you, Jess Tom. President Carter wrote this to be included. Quote, we cast this message into the cosmos. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some, perhaps many, may have inhabited planets and space-faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message. This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, our feelings, we are attempting to survive our time

so that we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved these problems we face to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe." Can't help but notice I didn't put anything about Jesus in there, Jimmy. Because if I was as Christian as Jimmy Carter, universe." Can't help but notice I didn't put anything about Jesus in there, Jimmy.

If I was as Christian as Jimmy Carter pretends to be, I might mention God's son. It's fine, whatever you bake fat liar. It's fine. Leave him out of your fucking room. What I find amazing here is we are way more welcoming to actual aliens than to indigenous migrant or illegal. There's also, on the record, music from around the world, a lot of traditional indigenous music, but it also had a smattering of classical music, three works by Johann Sebastian Bach,

two by Beethoven, and one by Mozart. It also had one rock song, Chuck Berry's Johnny Be Good. Nice. Nice. Slide declaration of new classic status slipped into a list of old safe ones. I see. That's what you're doing. Johnny B Goods a good pick though.

I like that. It really is. I think it's a great song. They were going to put something from the Beatles, but they couldn't because they couldn't get the license. Seriously. Oh my God, it's the perfect metaphor for the Beatles. They get to live in eternity in space forever, but they're too busy fighting about life. Yeah.

Can my girlfriend be on the web? No, man, never mind. We're doing Charlie. Good. Carl Sagan, Cornell professor and famous science communicator in the 70s through 90s, was the chair of the committee to produce the golden record. He also had a hand in directing Voyager 1 to take a very iconic photo after it had finished its mission to Saturn.

Seigen asked the imaging team in 1980 to turn Voyager back around toward Earth and snap a photo of our planet. By Seigen's own admission, there would not be scientific significance to the photo because the image would not show any details of our planet from that far out. Instead his plan was to show the Earth as it is in the cosmos, a tiny planet in a sea of space. The team was happy to do it, but the idea was rejected because there was a chance that aiming the lens

back at the sun may damage the imaging system. Fast forward nine years, and they did decide to take this photo. And then Carl had to spend the entire rest of his career pretending his reaction wasn't, yeah, no, you guys were right. Blue pixel, what this was is such a fucking waste. I'm sorry.

Look at the size of this nose. You think I'm not doing cocaine. It's the 70s. They spun this pro back around and snapped the shot. And it's really an amazing image, despite what Noah just said. The Earth in this photo was taken when the Voyager was 40.4 astronomical units or 3.8 billion miles away. And it's less than a pixel across.

Sagan wrote a long piece about the image and even named a book after it, pale blue dot. And to close this out, I wanna read a short bit from that book. Quote, we succeeded in taking that picture from deep space, and if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you've ever heard of, every human being who's ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies,

and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in our history

of our species lived here on a mode of dust suspended in a sun beam." End quote. Nerd. And if you had to stop him, what'd you get? What'd you get? What would it be? First off, it would be fuck you guys.

That would be my summary. You guys. I literally wrote a note that I was like hey I don't want to end my thing with a fart noise after a great Carl Sagan quote and Heath was like I've got it. Take that beauty. Got love, the citation needed podcast. Yes, I'm ready for the quiz. Just do it. Alright, Cecil, you kind of took the wind out of my spaces stupid goofs by reading two beautiful quotes in a row, one of which is literally the reason I'm an atheist, whatever spaces stupid because I can't do it.

And now it's time for me to not use my brain again. What songs should be on the golden record? A, you see in the sky with diamonds. B, thank you. Thank you. It gets worse. It does. Space jam. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. See rocket man kind. That's okay. That one's not bad. Like you or D. Bittersweet symphony.

Just a good song. A hard decision there. They should do that one Green Day song. That one that they play at every graduate. Which brings time of your life. Another turning point. Yeah. There you go. That one. That's the one. That's a

desigree that green day song. Yeah. Yeah. Incorrected secret answer. F. I walk a lonely road. I'm broken dreams. Okay. Maybe name the songs, right? Thank you. All right. See, soul. The Voyager missions are more important than naysayers want to believe because a it's only by recognizing and satisfying the innate curiosity to the drives mankind that we've accomplished anything at all,

and only by yielding to our impulse to learn and to grow and to be bigger than our petty day-to-day lives, will we truly achieve anything approaching greatness? Or B, we weren't ever given that money to poor people, may as well light it on fire. That's so funny. Oh, fucker. Science fire.

You know, I was gonna say, I was gonna point out, like, well, how much money do you give away? And then I was like, oh, yeah, the Alomoni. Oh, okay, all right, not that nice. Oh, okay. Okay, so yeah, it's B. It's B. Why didn't say the answer was B, C. So it could have been A.

It's B. It's B though. All right, it's really big. Oh, unvoient. What is the single item that registers higher on my personal historical disappointment list than the Voyager Pictures of Uranus? A, the day I realized this was as big as it was getting. B, wait, is that true? Did they I realize this was as big as it was getting

Wait, is that true? Yeah, that's just it doesn't yeah, there's not like a second puberty sir I'm sorry to be the one to tell you Be the fact that I said through that a whole damn season and Rian and Deet never fucked See my career Or D the moment I realized that see my career worked perfectly for this track. Oh, it's D and I'm just as sad as you are, buddy. Yeah, right, right. Yeah. And I'm happy. No, if it makes you feel any better, when you Google, Rianne and D the first Google suggestion is fan fiction. So there's a lot of unhappy people out there right there.

Somewhere for me to go. I'll take good. Well wrap this shit up. He's wrapped this shit up. Excellent. No wins. Congratulations. Yeah. You were wrong or something, Cecil. And right on the e-lives. I guess. I'll show you around. I get to pick the essay as to the essayist will be Eli for fucking up the whole rhythm of the question thing. Yeah! Alright, well for Tom Noah, Cecil and Eli, I'm Heath. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week and by then Noah will be an expert on something else. Between now and then, nope Eli can hear Tom and Cecil on Cognitive Dististinance, and you can hear Eli Noon myself on God awful movies, the scathing atheist and the skepticrat. And if you'd like to make a per episode donation,

you can go to patreon.com slash citation pod. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, listen to past episodes, connect with us on social media, or take a look at the show notes, you should check out citationpod.com. Oh, they're fuck out CitationPod.com. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Oh, they're fucker. Fucking dead. Hey, Cecil, what's the matter, dude? Fuckin' nothing, Noah. Just Tom Heath and Eli.

Such jerks about the space on today's show, you know? What the hell? Yeah, I got it, but hey, you want to see something that'll make you feel a lot better? Yeah, then. Yeah, sure. Hey, Eli, Tom Heath. Look, we put Google- Googleey eyes on the Voyager and now it looks real sad. So beautiful. I love it. I want to have all the money and needs to come home.

Ah, they're idiots. They're idiots. I get it. Yep. You know what? I do feel better. Good. Is iPop to hot?

Vovoo. No. What? Put it back. Put it back. He's hurting.! Vovoo NOOOO! What?! Put it back, put it back! He's hurting! Save Vovoo!