The Voyager 1 spacecraft will exit the outer edge of the Oort cloud at 100,000 times the Earth-Sun separation in about 30,000 years. Roughly 10,000 years later, Voyager 1 will pass within 1.6 light years from the red dwarf star Gliese 445, currently located at a distance of 17.6 light years from Earth. In the more distant future, billions of years from now, Voyager 1 could collide with an Earth-like exoplanet along its path. In that case, it would appear as an interstellar meteor in the exoplanet’s sky. Meteor experts on that exoplanet might dismiss the event as a common impact by a natural rock. But perhaps among them, there will be one curious astrophysicist who would be intrigued by the anomalous properties of this interstellar meteor and check whether it might be technological in origin. The astrophysicist might lead an expedition to retrieve materials from the impact site, and ignore the ridicule from academic peers and the gatekeeping of scientific journals. That astrophysicist might discover that they are not alone. And we are not alone. That astrophysicist would be my kindred spirit.
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