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Originally Posted by Kizarvexis
I found this near the end interesting.
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Finally, considering that the Pioneer spacecrafts are submitted to such an acceleration of about –8. x 10-8 cm/s2 while moving through an enormous Kuiper and Oort cloud, the spacecrafts will absorb that dust due to the mechanism of accretion of dust. After millions of years of accretion, these spacecrafts will become larger and larger in time, while slowing down (unless reaccelerated later by other bodies). Pioneer spacecrafts will become the nucleus of asteroids flying away from the solar system with the interstellar dust.
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So if in a million years Pioneer 11 passes near an alien civilization, they may not know it is artificial and think it is just another pile of rock and dust? So much for worrying about whether some alien will understand the plaque or not. 
Kizarvexis |
Yeah
It seems that the authors haven't spotted their own little logic problem. If this dust is so adhesive, why is it still there? - we consider that there are possibly billions of bodies in the Kuiper belt, most of them much much larger than the Pioneers. They should all be sweeping up and accreting this magic dust, so there would be precious little left over by now for the probes to undergo this snowball process and turn themselves into interstellar asteroids.