The golden record's location on Voyager (middle-bottom-left)
The Voyager Golden Records are two identical phonograph records which were included aboard the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977.[1] The records contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form who may find them. The records are a time capsule.
The Voyager 1 probe is currently the farthest human-made object from Earth. Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have reached interstellar space, the region between stars where the galactic plasma is present.[4] Like their predecessors Pioneer 10 and 11, which featured a simple plaque, both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched by NASA with a message aboard—a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate to extraterrestrials a story of the world of humans on Earth.[3]
This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.
The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University. The selection of content for the record took almost a year. Sagan and his associates assembled 116 images (one used for calibration) and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind, thunder and animals (including the songs of birds and whales). To this they added audio content to represent humanity: spoken greetings in 55 ancient and modern languages, including a spoken greeting in English by U.N.Secretary-GeneralKurt Waldheim and a greeting by Sagan's six-year-old son, Nick; other human sounds, like footsteps and laughter (Sagan's);[1] the inspirational message Per aspera ad astra in Morse code; and musical selections from different cultures and eras. The record also includes a printed message from U.S. president Jimmy Carter.[5]
The collection of images includes many photographs and diagrams both in black and white, and color. The first images are of scientific interest, showing mathematical and physical quantities, the Solar System and its planets, DNA, and human anatomy and reproduction. Care was taken to include not only pictures of humanity, but also some of animals, insects, plants and landscapes. Images of humanity depict a broad range of cultures. These images show food, architecture, and humans in portraits as well as going about their day-to-day lives. Many pictures are annotated with one or more indications of scales of time, size, or mass. Some images contain indications of chemical composition. All measures used on the pictures are defined in the first few images using physical references that are likely to be consistent anywhere in the universe.
The Golden Record also carries an hour-long recording of the brainwaves of Ann Druyan.[11] During the recording of the brainwaves, Druyan thought of many topics, including Earth's history, civilizations and the problems they face, and what it was like to fall in love.[14]
After NASA had received criticism over the nudity on the Pioneer plaque (line drawings of a naked man and woman), the agency chose not to allow Sagan and his colleagues to include a photograph of a nude man and woman on the record. Instead, only a silhouette of the couple was included.[15] However, the record does contain "Diagram of vertebrate evolution", by Jon Lomberg, with drawings of an anatomically correct naked male and naked female, showing external organs.[16] The person waving on the diagram was also changed: on the Pioneer plaque, the man is waving, while on the "Vertebrate evolution" image, the woman is waving.
The pulsar map and hydrogen molecule diagram are shared in common with the Pioneer plaque.
The 116 images (one used for calibration) are encoded in analogue form and composed of 512 vertical lines. The remainder of the record is audio, designed to be played at 16+2⁄3 revolutions per minute.
Jimmy Iovine, who was still early in his career as a music producer, served as sound engineer for the project at the recommendation of John Lennon, who was contacted to contribute but was unable to take part.[17]
Sagan's team wanted to include the Beatles 1969 song "Here Comes the Sun" on the record, but the record company EMI, which held the copyrights, declined.[18][19] In the 1978 book Murmurs of Earth, the failure to secure permission for the song is cited as one of the legal challenges faced by the team compiling the Voyager Golden Record.[20] In the book, Sagan said that the Beatles favoured the idea, but "[they] did not own the copyright, and the legal status of the piece seemed too murky to risk."[21] When asked about the obstacle presented by EMI with regard to "Here Comes the Sun", despite the artists' wishes, Ann Druyan said in 2015: "Yeah, that was one of those cases of having to see the tragedy of our planet. Here's a chance to send a piece of music into the distant future and distant time, and to give it this kind of immortality, and they're worried about money ... we got this telegram [from EMI] saying that it will be $50,000 per record for two records, and the entire Voyager record cost $18,000 to produce."[22] However, this was denied in 2017 by Timothy Ferris; in his recollection, "Here Comes the Sun" was not seriously considered for inclusion.[17]
In July 2015, NASA uploaded the audio contents of the record to the audio streaming service SoundCloud.[23][24]
This is a photograph of Egypt, Red Sea, Sinai Peninsula and the Nile from Earth orbit annotated with chemical composition of Earth's atmosphere.
Playback
Explanation of the Voyager record cover diagram, as provided by NASA
In the upper left-hand corner of the record cover is a drawing of the phonograph record and the stylus carried with it. The stylus is in the correct position to play the record from the beginning. Written around it in binary notation is the correct time of one rotation of the record, 3.6 seconds, expressed in time units of 0.70 billionths of a second, the time period associated with a fundamental transition of the hydrogen atom. The drawing indicates that the record should be played from the outside in. Below this drawing is a side view of the record and stylus, with a binary number giving the time to play one side of the record—about an hour (more precisely, between 53 and 54 minutes).
The information in the upper right-hand portion of the cover is designed to show how pictures are to be constructed from the recorded signals. The top drawing shows the typical signal that occurs at the start of a picture. The picture is made from this signal, which traces the picture as a series of vertical lines, similar to analog television (in which the picture is a series of horizontal lines). Picture lines 1, 2 and 3 are noted in binary numbers, and the duration of one of the "picture lines", about 8 milliseconds, is noted. The drawing immediately below shows how these lines are to be drawn vertically, with staggered "interlace" to give the correct picture rendition. Immediately below this is a drawing of an entire picture raster, showing that there are 512 (29) vertical lines in a complete picture. Immediately below this is a replica of the first picture on the record to permit the recipients to verify that they are decoding the signals correctly. A circle was used in this picture to ensure that the recipients use the correct ratio of horizontal to vertical height in picture reconstruction.[25] Color images were represented by three images in sequence, one each for red, green, and blue components of the image. A color image of the spectrum of the sun was included for calibration purposes.
The drawing in the lower left-hand corner of the cover is the pulsar map previously sent as part of the plaques on Pioneers 10 and 11. It shows the location of the Solar System with respect to 14 pulsars, whose precise periods are given. The drawing containing two circles in the lower right-hand corner is a drawing of the hydrogen atom in its two lowest states, with a connecting line and digit 1 to indicate that the time interval associated with the transition from one state to the other is to be used as the fundamental time scale, both for the time given on the cover and in the decoded pictures.[26]
Manufacturing
Preparation for the record's packaging before the launch of Voyager 2
Blank records were provided by the Pyral S.A. of Créteil, France. CBS Records contracted the JVC Cutting Center in Boulder, Colorado to cut the lacquer masters which were then sent to the James G. Lee record-processing center in Gardena, California to cut and gold-plate eight Voyager records. After the records were plated they were mounted in aluminum containers and delivered to JPL.[27][28]
The record is constructed of gold-plated copper and is 12 inches (30cm) in diameter.[3] The record's cover is aluminum and electroplated upon it is an ultra-pure sample of the isotope uranium-238. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.468 billion years. It is possible (e.g., via mass spectrometry) that a civilization that encounters the record will be able to use the ratio of remaining uranium to the other elements to determine the age of the record.[29]
The records also had the inscription "To the makers of music – all worlds, all times" hand-etched on its surface. The inscription was located in the "takeout grooves", an area of the record between the label and playable surface. Since this was not in the original specifications, the record was initially rejected, to be replaced with a blank disc. Sagan later convinced the administrator to include the record as is.[30]
Manufacturing at the James G. Lee Record Processing center in Gardena, California
Phonograph record
Recording section
Record etching
Record etching
Gold plating
Gold plating
Gold plating control
Journey
The golden record is attached to the spacecraft.
Voyager 1 was launched in 1977, passed the orbit of Pluto in 1990, and left the Solar System (in the sense of passing the termination shock) in November 2004. It is now in the Kuiper belt. In about 40,000 years, it and Voyager 2 will each come to within about 1.8 light-years of two separate stars: Voyager 1 will have approached star Gliese 445, located in the constellation Camelopardalis, and Voyager 2 will have approached star Ross 248, located in the constellation of Andromeda.
In May 2005, it was reported that Voyager 1 had entered the heliosheath,[31] the region beyond the termination shock. The termination shock is where the solar wind, a thin stream of electrically charged gas blowing continuously outward from the Sun, is slowed by pressure from gas between the stars. At the termination shock, the solar wind slows abruptly from its average speed of 300–700km/s (670,000–1,570,000mph) and becomes denser and hotter.
In March 2012, Voyager 1 was over 17.9 billion km from the Sun and traveling at a speed of 3.6 AU per year (approximately 61,000km/h (38,000mph)), while Voyager 2 was over 14.7 billion km away and moving at about 3.3 AU per year (approximately 56,000km/h (35,000mph)).[32]
On September 12, 2013, NASA announced that Voyager 1 had left the heliosheath and entered interstellar space,[33] although it still remains within the Sun's gravitational sphere of influence.
Of the eleven instruments carried on Voyager 1, four are still operational and continue to send back data. It is expected that there will be insufficient energy to power any of the instruments beyond 2025.[citation needed]
In a Saturday Night Live segment ("Next Week in Review") in episode 64 of the show's third season (originally aired 1978), Steve Martin's character, a psychic named Cocuwa, announced that extraterrestrials had responded to the record with the four words "Send more Chuck Berry".[34]
It was also referenced in the 2005 animation known as Fafner in the Azure as being one of the objects that the aliens discover.
The SCP Foundation collaborative-writing project short story SCP-1342 - To the Makers of Music (2012) focuses on SCP-1342-1, a replica of the Voyager 1 made by aliens from Gliese 445 contacting humanity. Reversed engineered by the "Gliscians" (SCP-1342-3) by the year 42,412 AD and sent back in time to 1982, their own version of the Golden Record (SCP-1342-2) details how the Gliscians reverse-engineered radio wave technology from a future humanity and forged an alliance, which ended when humans devastated Gliese 445-C shortly after the Gliscian invention of space-time travel. Upon recovering the original Voyager 1, the dying Gliscians opted to prevent that future not by destroying the Earth, but by sending SCP-1342 as an offering of peace.[35]
In 2014, the podcastThe Truth produced an episode titled "Voyager Found", where the Voyager crash-lands on the property of Dawn and Tad, an alien couple, who decide to play the record.[36]
In 2014, composer Dario Marianelli wrote a Voyager Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, which was premiered in Brisbane, Australia in November that year by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra (QSO), and in Stockholm the following April (2015), by the Swedish Radio Orchestra. The QSO, with British violinist Jack Liebeck, performed the piece over several concerts at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre; each performance was preceded by a lecture by physicist professor Brian Cox, who talked at length about NASA's Voyager Mission, and introduced the concerto. The 30-minute piece, in one single movement, depicts the journey of the Voyager through the Solar System, using as references some of the music that is on board each probe, on the Golden Record.[37]
The Voyager probes are a visitable landmark in the 2014 space-trading/simulation game Elite: Dangerous. It is possible to see the golden record on the probe models.
The stageplay Voyage to Voyager depicts the team of scientists, including Carl and Linda Sagan, Frank Drake, Tim Ferris, Ann Druyan, and Jon Lomberg, as they work to create the Golden Record. It premiered at the Kansas City Fringe Festival in 2015.[38]
On the 2015 album "Share Your Toys" English singer-songwriter Gavin Osborn included a song called "And Still They Move" which is a story about a couple (Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan) who fall in love whilst making a mix tape: It just so happens to be the greatest mix tape of all time, spinning into infinity.[39]
English folk artist Jim Moray released the song "Sounds of Earth" on his 2016 album Upcetera. Named after the golden record, it tells the story of the project with a particular focus on the relationship between Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan.[40]
Grace Petrie, an English songwriter and folk singer, released a track by the name of "The Golden Record" on her 2017 album Heart First Aid Kit, which is a love song based upon the story of Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, referencing the additions made to the record intended to depict the sound of human beings in love.[41]
Troop Zero, a 2019 American comedy-drama film, inspired by Alibar's 2010 play Christmas and Jubilee Behold the Meteor Shower,[43] focuses on the story of a scout group competing to have their voices included on the Golden Record.
The 2019 death metal album Death Atlas by Cattle Decapitation opens with a track that samples the greetings on the Golden Record in their entirety.
The 2020 indie rock album Possession by Joywave features sounds from the record.[45]
The 2024 German language Netflix mini series The Signal (2024 Netflix Series) is a science fiction thriller featuring Voyager 1's recording of the child's voice saying 'Hello', followed by the return to Earth of the spacecraft apparently by a distant and unseen extra-terrestrial.[46]
Publications
Most of the images used on the record (reproduced in black and white), together with information about its compilation, can be found in the 1978 book Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record by Carl Sagan, F. D. Drake, Ann Druyan, Timothy Ferris, Jon Lomberg, and Linda Salzman.[47] A CD-ROM version was issued by Warner New Media in 1992.[48] Author Ann Druyan, who later married Carl Sagan, wrote about the Voyager Record in the epilogue of Sagan's final book Billions and Billions (1997).[49]
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the record, Ozma Records launched a Kickstarter project to release the record contents in LP format as part of a box set also containing a hardcover book, turntable slipmat, and art print.[50] The Kickstarter was successfully funded with over $1.4 million raised. Ozma Records then produced another edition of the three-disc LP vinyl record box set that also includes the audio content of the Golden Record, softcover book containing the images encoded on the record, images sent back by Voyager, commentary from Ferris, art print, turntable slipmat, and a collector's box. This edition was released in February 2018 along with a 2xCD-Book edition.[51][52] In January 2018, Ozma Records' "Voyager Golden Record; 40th Anniversary Edition" won a Grammy Award for best boxed or limited-edition package.[53]
Ann Druyan is an American documentary producer and director specializing in the communication of science. She co-wrote the 1980 PBS documentary series Cosmos, hosted by Carl Sagan, whom she married in 1981. She is the creator, producer, and writer of the 2014 sequel, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey and its sequel series, Cosmos: Possible Worlds, as well as the book of the same name. She directed episodes of both series.
Dr Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is his research on the possibility of extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by exposure to light. He assembled the first physical messages sent into space, the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, which were universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. He argued in favor of the hypothesis, which has since been accepted, that the high surface temperatures of Venus are the result of the greenhouse effect.
Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, as part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System and the interstellar space beyond the Sun's heliosphere. It was launched 16 days after its twin Voyager 2. It communicates through the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) to receive routine commands and to transmit data to Earth. Real-time distance and velocity data is provided by NASA and JPL. At a distance of 162.7 AU from Earth as of March 2024, it is the most distant human-made object from Earth.
Voyager 2 is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, to study the outer planets and interstellar space beyond the Sun's heliosphere. As a part of the Voyager program, it was launched 16 days before its twin, Voyager 1, on a trajectory that took longer to reach gas giants Jupiter and Saturn but enabled further encounters with ice giants Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 2 remains the only spacecraft to have visited either of the ice giant planets, and was the third of five spacecraft to achieve Solar escape velocity, which will allow it to leave the Solar System.
The Voyager program is an American scientific program that employs two interstellar probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable alignment of the two gas giants Jupiter and Saturn and the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, to fly near them while collecting data for transmission back to Earth. After launch, the decision was made to send Voyager 2 near Uranus and Neptune to collect data for transmission back to Earth.
Frank Donald Drake was an American astrophysicist and astrobiologist.
The Pioneer plaques are a pair of gold-anodized aluminum plaques that were placed on board the 1972 Pioneer 10 and 1973 Pioneer 11 spacecraft, featuring a pictorial message, in case either Pioneer 10 or 11 is intercepted by intelligent extraterrestrial life. The plaques show the nude figures of a human male and female along with several symbols that are designed to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft.
Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of Earth taken on February 14, 1990, by the Voyager 1 space probe from an unprecedented distance of approximately 6 billion kilometers, as part of that day's Family Portrait series of images of the Solar System.
Nicholas Julian Zapata Sagan is an American novelist and screenwriter. He is the author of the science fiction novels Idlewild, Edenborn, and Everfree, and has also written scripts for episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager. He is the son of astronomer Carl Sagan and artist and writer Linda Salzman.
Linda Salzman was an American artist and writer.
Timothy Ferris is an American science writer and the best-selling author of twelve books, including The Science of Liberty (2010) and Coming of Age in the Milky Way (1988), for which he was awarded the American Institute of Physics Prize and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He also wrote The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe(s) Report (1997), a popular science book on the study of the universe. Ferris has produced three PBS documentaries: The Creation of the Universe, Life Beyond Earth, and Seeing in the Dark.
Puspawarna is a gamelan composition famous in Central Java. It is a ketawang in slendro pathet manyura. Thus the full title of the piece often given as Ketawang Puspawarna Laras Slendro Pathet Manyura. Manyura, the final pathet in a wayang performance, is said to evoke a mood of ripeness or fulfillment.
Valya Mladenova Balkanska is a Bulgarian folk music singer from the Rhodope Mountains known locally for her wide repertoire of Balkan folk songs, but in the West mainly for singing the song "Izlel ye Delyo Haydutin", part of the Voyager Golden Record selection of music included in the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977.
The Family Portrait, or sometimes Portrait of the Planets, is an image of the Solar System acquired by Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990, from a distance of approximately 6 billion km from Earth. It features individual frames of six planets and a partial background indicating their relative positions. The picture is a mosaic of 60 frames. The frames used to compose the image were the last photographs taken by either Voyager spacecraft. The frames were also the source of the famous Pale Blue Dot image of the Earth. Astronomer Carl Sagan, who was part of the Voyager imaging team, campaigned for many years to have the pictures taken.
Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space is a 1994 book by the astronomer Carl Sagan. It is the sequel to Sagan's 1980 book Cosmos and was inspired by the famous 1990 Pale Blue Dot photograph, for which Sagan provides a poignant description. In the book, Sagan mixes philosophy about the human place in the universe with a description of the current knowledge about the Solar System. He also details a human vision for the future.
Jon Lomberg is an American space artist and science journalist. He was Carl Sagan's principal artistic collaborator for more than twenty years on many projects from 1972 through 1996. In 1998, the International Astronomical Union officially named an asteroid in recognition of his achievements in science communication. He was NASA's Design Director for the Golden Record on the Voyager spacecraft; the cover he designed is expected to last at least a billion years.
The Voyager Golden Record contains 116 images and a variety of sounds. The items for the record, which is carried on both the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft, were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University. Included are natural sounds, musical selections from different cultures and eras, spoken greetings in 59 languages, human sounds like footsteps and laughter, and printed messages from President Jimmy Carter and U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.
"Unafraid of the Dark" is the thirteenth and final episode of the American documentary television series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey and its series finale. It premiered on June 8, 2014, on Fox and aired on June 9, 2014, on the National Geographic Channel. The episode was written by Ann Druyan and Steven Soter, and directed by Ann Druyan, making this her series directorial debut. The episode explores the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter, as well as the contributions and theories of Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky, who furthered our understanding of "supernovae, neutron stars and 'standard candles.'" The finale reveals a recording of life on Earth - the final message on the golden record of the space probe, Voyager. The episode ends with Carl Sagan's iconic speech on Earth as the "Pale Blue Dot."
Patrick is a Georgian polyphonic choral folk song. It is a three-part song from the region of Kakheti, dramatising preparations for a battle. It is characterised by two highly ornamented individual vocal parts over a coral foundation.
Yervant Terzian was an American astronomer. He was the Tisch Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Cornell University's Department of Astronomy, which he chaired between 1979 and 1999.
Originally based on public domain text from the NASA websiteArchived 2017-07-24 at the Wayback Machine , where selected images and sounds from the record can be found.
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