How far will a radio wave travel in outer space?

Ive heard they go very far but i dont know how far.

Unless interfered with it should go on indefinitly

In theory, they travel forever. In practice, there is a distance at which is blends with the background noise. This distance depends on the transmitted flux, the polarization and the frequency (or wavelength).

Forever.

If you ever see the movie Contact (Jodie Foster) the opening scene illustrates this really well.

they go on forever and ever, until they hit something and sometimes could possibly come back. my teacher said that they had super sensitive machines on certian bases and once in a while...they'll hear a radio station show.....from the 1960's or something like that

that's what i heard.

no, radio waves don't maintain their structure forever

I was mistakened at one point myself and thought it would go on forever, but I was wrong. they break down over distance.

it disperses over distance until finally the signal is unreadable by our means of technology. it doesn't mean that its absolutely unreadable though if you consider aliens might have better tech ot read the dissipated signal

we've sent radio signals from our stations for 50 years. radio travels at the speed of light. sooooo radio waves have made it 50 light years away from us at the most...if they CAN make it that far... (researching for the term that explains the dissapation of the signal)

I think its called Scattering
or like in your other question, some answerer used the term
attenuation, if you please.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_propagation
"electromagnetic waves (radio, light, X-rays, etc) obey the inverse-square law which states that the power density of an electromagnetic wave is proportional to the inverse of the square of r (where r is the distance [radius] from the source) or"
http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/3/5/f/35fabb16107f6dcc7878dbe5cd6b75c4.png

So, the max distance depends on the strength of the signal......

I believe most radio waves we send out won't make it more than 4 light years before the signal breaks down according to the inverse-square law.

http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/12lys.html

All electromagnetic radiation travels at the speed of light forever in a straight line unless it's interfered with by gravity (then it appears to bend but actually the space it's traveling just bends) or something else.

As Monica suggests it can be reflected into a different direction. Thanks for that great story Monica :)

I don't know but the farther energy travels the more likely it will break down and eventually it will degrade to the point it is undecipherable.

It will take awhile and be very far from the source.

Recent research suggests that unfocused radio and TV broadcasts attenuate at about two light years to the point where they become indistinguishable from the background clutter.