The Voyager 2 probe could be the first man-made object to travel outside the solar system in a few years, which may or may not result in it being discovered by sentient life and then sent back to "join with its Creator". V'ger 2 actually lost out to V'ger 1 in terms of crossing the "termination shock" boundary, a place where solar wind falters due to pressure "from gas in the interstellar medium lying outside the solar system". It's all very astrophysics, but suffice it to say that the probe is now about three times as far away from the Sun as Pluto, and will manage to give us a firsthand look at what's outside the solar system. [NewScientist]

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