The Voyager Record

This is not news; not even in the slightest. But it is still (vaguely at least) interesting.

The Voyager satellite

The Voyager Golden Record was sent into space in 1977 on two unmanned craft. Consisting of a 12-inch gold-plated copper phonograph record containing sounds and images, it is, basically, a visual and and an auditory business card for humanity. These two satellites are very small, but if scientific bodies want to spend ludicrous amounts of money to send a tiny object into infinitley vast and mainly unpopulated space, then fair enough.

To be effective, a business card must be easy to receive and be easily read. Some of the inscriptions on the record are so abstract as to be practically unintelligible by the majority of humanity, let alone little green people who have nothing better to do than loiter in space picking up our rubbish.

While the basic idea is laudable, if a bit mad, the record itself “reads” like a description of life on earth written by scientists weasled away in a laboratory rather than out there witnessing real life.

The Record (and its mad hieroglyphics)

The technical details

Straight from Nasa: “The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University, et. al. Dr. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Carter and U.N. Secretary General Waldheim. Each record is encased in a protective aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and a needle. Instructions, in symbolic language, explain the origin of the spacecraft and indicate how the record is to be played.”

Nudey illustrated people are our intergalactic messengers

So What Does It Say and Show?

Well, it doesn’t show the generic representation of you in the nude as shown above here. This is actually on the Pioneer satellites and is commonly assumed to be on Voyager. It does however attempt to convey as much as it can about our planet, which has changed hugely since the launch. But why bother describing it?

Without Further Ado:

Update

Voyager has been stolen by computer hacking aliens. Well, maybe, if you squint your mind really hard…

Bibliography
Hear and see its content
Nasa’s official website for the record
One of Nasa’s sites about the record

This article was posted by Ronan McDonnell on Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 02:06.
It is archived in Science and tagged ambassadors, nasa, phonograph, space, the universe.

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