Did You Know We Can Still Spot Voyager 1?

Did You Know We Can Still Spot Voyager 1?
NASA’s Voyager 1, which last week made headlines after scientists announced it had officially left our solar system, is now more than 11 billion miles from Earth. It has traveled farther than any other object humanity has ever produced. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still spot it in the sky from Earth. Using a network of 10 radio telescopes called the Very Long Baseline Array, astronomers found and photographed the glow coming from Voyager’s main transmitter. The signal is beaming from the satellite at 22 watts, “which is comparable to a typical police car radio or — in visible light — a refrigerator light bulb,” says the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) team that tracked down the little probe that could. 

Massive laser inching closer to mastering fusion power
scientists at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore Labs in California use an ultrapowerful laser system, which melds 192 laser beams into a single incredible burst of energy that heats and compress a capsule of hydrogen fuel to the point at which fusion take place. The result of a late September test: the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction was greater than the amount of energy used…

Clues to Lost Prehistoric Code Discovered in Mesopotamia
How these devices would have worked in prehistoric times, before the invention of writing, is a mystery. Researchers now face the question of how people recorded the number and type of a commodity being exchanged without the help of writing.