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On the Voyager Weekly Reports site, the velocity below is noted.

Velocity Relative to Earth (Km/sec) 24.914

Does this mean that Voyager 2 is traveling at 8% the speed of light? (25k/300k m/s)

And more interestingly, what relativistic effects does this induce?

  • Is Voyager 2 physically "longer" than it used to be?
  • Is the clock on Voyager 2 always getting out of sync?
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25 km/sec is not anywhere near 8% of the speed of light. It is more like 0.008% – Gregory Putzel May 7 2010 at 18:33
Speed of light is 3*10^8 m/s = 300 Mm/s = 300000 km/s... you are off by quite a bit. A recently discussion on Slashdot linked to some computations that showed the relativistic time difference, assuming Voyager 2 has always been traveling at current speed, works out to be 1.7 seconds over its 33 years life span. – Willie Wong May 7 2010 at 18:38
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 It's routine for clocks on space vehicles to "get out of sync". relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2003-1 – Dan Piponi May 7 2010 at 18:39
Also I think this is a neither a research level question nor mathematics. Your questions are ontological per special relativity, and computations involved are simple. – Willie Wong May 7 2010 at 18:41
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 The OP is presumably from one of those countries (like Germany or Scandinavia) which uses a decimal comma and sometimes a period every three digits to make big numbers more readable. In other words, had it been written as 24,914 km/s it would likely have been understood correctly. Anyway, I am voting to close this as off topic. – Harald Hanche-Olsen May 7 2010 at 18:50

closed as off topic by Pete L. Clark, Robin Chapman, Harald Hanche-Olsen, Steve Huntsman, Gjergji Zaimi May 7 2010 at 19:03

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