EDIT: I hope it's Jean-Luc and not The Borg!!
My attitude is that it's something similar to getting ready for the end of the world by putting money in a savings account. If the money (or gold under your bed, cans of beans in the basement or even a pistol in your nightstand) does any good then it's not the end of the world.
If the universe is so crowded or so good at finding things like voyager that it's found in a meaningful (i.e. before humanity goes extinct or joins the godhead) time frame then we would have that encounter if voyager existed or not.
Possibly an advanced civilization that says "No, not ours."
"That belongs to the previous tenants. The probe is one of the few interesting things they did, otherwise they were terrible planet owners, they fought with each other and didn't appreaciate what they had, they wrecked the whole place."
Easier said than done. The Earth will be nowhere near where it is today. I assume such advanced civilization would be able to do the calculations, but it's going to be tricky. I hope they share with us their ways to solve the n-body problem.
As for more probes - getting more speed than these did efficiently is probably hard, let alone the fact that they don’t generate personal profit probably stops them being politically viable for a while…
I only mention that to say that the motivations of people in the future will probably seem odd to us and it's possible ours may seem equally odd to them. Not odd in the sense that they are intellectually inscrutable but - like people getting excited over the matters theological - that they're emotionally inscrutable.
Could you please share the title of this book?
A new probe wouldn't necessarily need to travel faster than these to not be on Earth when the sun dies.
The idea of there being a minuscule chance the Voyager probes hit anything is fair, but even a third one of the exact same model launched in the exact same direction has just as much chance of surviving just as long, barring wild speculation that could easily go either way.
> but also any future objects sent from Earth to do the same things
As somehow saying something about the “furthest”
Here is one approach using solar sails that would get up to 22 AU/year (~6 times faster than Voyager 1):
https://youtu.be/NQFqDKRAROI?si=Ol20sGMnsEMhRVf1&t=883
...and then further down in TRL: using laser pushed light sails to get over 10% of the speed of light:
https://ia800108.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/24...
Whether humans will still exist or our planet is a glowing radioactive waste by the time the voyagers encounter a new star is not a given.
But the voyagers have interstellar particles and dust to contend with, 5 billion years of abrasion from particles will wear them away to nothing.
On top of that they will eventually come near a random star which will eat them, or at least damage them. For example in 40,000 years they'll come pretty near some stars. In 5 billion years? Lots of stars.
Earth will easily outlive them.
Not a physicist, but I thought this didn't really happen in orbital mechanics, instead they'll just orbit said star.
But if they get close they'll slow down by interaction with the atmosphere of the star. Which is more likely than random chance because the star is attracting them.
Although eventually a rather obscure form of evidence as it'll gradually become a melted blob of constituent materials from cosmic rays.
(Assuming my hazy memories of Beast Wars are correct)