Voyager 1 has entered a new region of space, sudden changes in cosmic rays indicate

[GenYus234]

Originally Posted by snopes

I know what the license plate on my car is, even when it's dirty.

Voyager didn't become V'ger over time. Instead the probe was found by machine life that read the probe's programming and then built the massive machine to fulfill the probe's mission. Unless the probe was programmed with its own name, the analogy would be more like encountering an unknown dirty car. Not only can you not read all of the letters, you can't be sure which letters are the make, model, or license plate.

[ganzfeld]

I was going to make this into a quip but then I realized that it actually could be close to the truth: Advanced intelligence (perhaps especially in the pulp-scifi world of Star Trek) is often portrayed as being helplessly and irrevocably literal-minded. I think a good part of that comes from the idea of a computer program. Computers were touted as being exceptionally intelligent before we had to deal with them on a daily basis. On the other hand, everyone learned that they would only do things exactly as the instructions were written. It goes back to the old idea of blowing up a robot by giving it a logical paradox. So here we - the underdogs who, because of the cleverness of our lower intelligence, can see that it's just a bit of schmutz on the nameplate - get a kick out of seeing our ancient and extremely intelligent superiors from the future make such a dumb mistake.

[Sylvanz]

In the first Star Trek movie the civilization that alters Voyager is a machine world. A world of computers as we understood them when the movie was made. The story of V'Ger was that the machine world was sterile and seeking "God". IIRC the machines hoped that by finding V'Ger's "Creator" they would find meaning.

It was pretty much a guiding theme in the Trek universe: intellect/logic vs. emotion/intuition and seeking the balance. It tried to explore what it meant to be human yadda yadda yadda. It was pretty idealistic stuff when it first appeared.

The movie had some nice ideas. It was just mmm not very well executed IMHO.

[GenYus234]

NASA: Voyager 2 spacecraft reaches interstellar space after four decades exploring solar system

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/10/us/nasa-voyager-2-update

However, just because the probes have left the heliosphere doesn't mean they have left our solar system. Its boundary is the outermost edge of the Oort Cloud, a group of small objects influenced by the gravity of our sun.

[dfresh]

It is incredible that they have managed to keep these going so long beyond their planned lifetime, and I hope that NASA will keep updating this for the next 2,300 to 30,000 years it takes to clear the Oort Cloud.