Like what is the ultimate fate of the voyager probes and others on escape trajectories? My understanding is that space is far too sparse for these things to ever hit anything by coincidence, so their eventual fate is probably to be ejected out of the galaxy at some point.

They are then unlikely to be moving fast enough to actually cross intergalactic distances quickly enough for the expansion of space to not outpace the distance covered, leaving them in this void forever.

How long would they be recognizable as technological objects before the eons worth of stray hydrogen atoms erode everything away?

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[–] ProfessorOwl_PhD@hexbear.net 20 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Hitting an object straight on is certainly unlikely, I'm not so sure about getting caught in a gravity well and becoming a satellite. I imagine the escape velocity of the milky way on the whole would have something to say about it actually leaving, too.

[–] john_browns_beard@hexbear.net 20 points 4 days ago

It's not moving fast enough to leave the galaxy: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8FDGo85/

Not sure how long it would take to erode away, but it's probably on the scale of billions of years. There's really nothing out there.