Plucky little traveller

[Cyberman]

121 AUs from Earth - 16 light-hours - and still returning data, Voyager I is set to become Earth's first interstellar traveller:

It would be nice, fulfilling even, if at the edge of the heliosphere there were, well, an actual edge, a boundary between our bubble and the cosmos. But, it's probably not going to be so cut and dried. "The boundary," Stone postulates, "will not be an instantaneous thing. [Voyager] won't suddenly be outside." Rather, the exit will be turbulent, "a mix of inside and outside," and the work of Stone and the other Voyager scientists is trying to square the different data -- the particles and the magnetic field -- to try to understand what that transition from inside to outside looks like. That turbulent region may take several months to get through.

Famously, both Voyagers are carrying a Golden Record containing sounds, images and other information, selected by a commitee chaired by Carl Sagan. I recently learned that the records were even electroplated with Uranium 238 so they can be radiometrically dated (for you creationists, that means "made up"). Anyway, to honour the upcoming event, whenever that is and however long it may last, here's a fascinating interactive presentation I found of the record and its contents:

http://goldenrecord.org/