NASA tries to unscramble Voyager 2 signals

It's highly likely that a 33 year old machine would malfunction. From a software perspective we now have much more resilient operating systems (not talking about Windows 7 for god's sake, think more like MacOS ) and from a hardware perspective, the processing power doubles almost every 18 months (Moore's law).
So probably even NASA think that they would have been better off sending voyager into space 5-7 years later Heck, what difference would it make, it's been there for 33 years and counting.

But when you think of the logical explanations presented so far, such as bit flipping, I'm not sure if they make real sense. The original article mentions that NASA reprogrammed it to send signals only about Voyager's own status. So it means that it's basic functions are still working properly. And I can't imagine how a single bit flip or even multipe bit flips would completely scramble the data (sounds more like encryption).

What comes to my mind is the malfunction of it's sensor devices (hardware) thus producing meaningless data. But probably NASA engineers would have figured out a simple malfunction.

It's usually quite hard to speculate on computer/electronic malfunctions without knowing the system, different components, software it's using etc. etc.
So I'm not saying that the propbability of something more sci-fi (ALIENS! ) going on is higher but such possibilities shouldn't be dismissed with uninformed scientific speculations.

Cheers!

reply to post by bilb_o


Yes. It's propable that Voyager's encryption system failed and scientific module too. If that is the case then with every tryout taking 13hrs to reach we might be looking with 2 months data sending back and forth to repair system. Still it's actually pretty amazing that this primitive tehnology, which is on voyager is able to do so much as it is able to do.
Anyway we should be most ashamed about the disk. God, it is so primitive and Sounds which are on it actually give me creeps. The greetings in those languages sound really creepy, not to mention other things.
I hope if we would send next probe with similiar mission as Voyager we would equip probe with A.I. At least that would be impressive and A.I would be able to manage probe's systems more efficiently. Not to mention it would be able to fix itself.
It would be also nice to send some primitive bacterial samples with it (Sealed of course)

P.S. It still is nonetheless awesome that this probe is working so well as it is. One can only be amazed by its durability.

[edit on 13-5-2010 by SpeDeZo]

reply to post by Atlantican


surely "the best scientific minds" would have thought of that? I mean, this wouldn't be news if it was such an easy answer to the question.

reply to post by Acidtastic

I thought they already had indentified the problem to be Bit Rot as Atlantican says. so the mystery has been solved. One thing, which needs to be solved is that thread on ATS where they claim that Alien's have "abducted" Voyager

reply to post by bilb_o


I think that it is interesting that Nasa said it was tranmitting a different patern. I believe that Encrypted data would usually be received in groups or patterns and the receiver would be familiar with this.

Do you think they will ever put the data on line?
Have they tried morse and murray codes?

If there was a bit failure then why can it still transmit other data?
It is as if it is saying I would like to let you know that I am ok
However as for my intel and science gathering probes - Well they are on hold for the moment - The big question is who or what pushed the hold/mute button..

[edit on 13-5-2010 by druid1]

[edit on 13-5-2010 by druid1]

reply to post by Pauligirl



Mabey they should try and view it from a musical stand point since we did send up MOZART.

[edit on 5/13/10 by Ophiuchus 13]