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this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2026
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The Voyagers, by some measures, haven't even left the solar system, and they've been going for decades
It's amazing that it hasn't collided with anything severe enough to end its research all these years...
That's because the space between things is enormous.
Most of the universe is just hydrogen gas, really small particles really far apart.
Something big enough to make a difference hitting Voyager would be a staggeringly rate event.
We assume all of that.
We really don't know how common objects are between stars. We've observed a couple of interstellar visitors passing through our system, old asteroids from origins unknown. But we can only track the really large ones. We can see mid sized objects when they come very close to earth, but we can't track small objects at all, we literally have no idea how much of that exists in deep space. (Or for the most part, in our own solar system)
Still, you can see just from the evidence that our deep space probes have never really (hit) anything, that it would in fact be a quite rare event. It's just hard to say how rare.
Like a single grain of dust should be enough at those speeds
aaaaand that's why we will NEVER reach 99% c
Dust at that speed would be CATASTROPHIC.
I like Alistair Reynolds' Revelation Dpace take on it.
Massive ice shields, long thin ships to minimize cross section.
Occasionally ships just go poof.