"Hello from the children of planet Earth." - One of the greetings on the Golden Record.
Children often wonder about aliens and UFOs and try to find them using telescopes. They are children after all. But even adults wonder about other galaxies, planets, solar systems, and so on, and fantasize about encounters with aliens. We don’t know about their existence for sure, but if they do exist after seeing our little invention, aliens will be amazed to run into a little spacecraft that is millions of miles away from home. Viewing the recorder will be more than blowing their mind. Here’s all about this invention that we hope will find the aliens.
What is the Golden Record?
Forty years ago, we sent a message to extraterrestrials - a collection of sights and sounds of life on Earth – Timothy Ferris, August 20, 2017
(Image source: reapwairarapa)
Voyager Golden Records are two phonograph records that were inserted into both Voyager spacecraft at launch in 1977. The records contain sounds and images which were selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. The information is intended for intelligent extraterrestrial life forms. The records can also be called a time capsule.
What’s in it?
Explanation of how to use the recorder by symbols (Image Source: Wikimedia)
It included 115 analogue-encoded photographs, greetings in 55 languages, a montage of 12-minutes of sounds on Earth, and also, 90 minutes of music.
These are the few selections that were involved in the recorder:
A Male and a pregnant Female’s Silhouette
According to the team, it was important to inform about the anatomy of the human body. NASA approved including the diagrams of human sex organs and images.
Eating, Licking, and Drinking
To demonstrate the functions of the mouth, an image of a woman licking an ice cream, a man eating a sandwich, and a man drinking water was attached.
Taj Mahal
It’s a proud moment for Indians as the little green men will be shown an Indian monument. It was selected as the most spectacular architecture.
Kiss
Recording this was a hectic task as few were very quiet and others were too loud. So, the music producer Jimmy Iovine kissed his arm to demonstrate and it landed on the record, where it was enacted by Ferris planting a kiss on Ann Druyan’s cheek.
Whale Greeting
Biologist Roger Payne contributed a whale song that was recorded in 1970 by hydrophones off the coast of Bermuda. Ferris included the song behind greetings in 55 languages.
What was the Idea behind the Recorder?
Location of Voyager 1 & 2 and Pioneer 10 & 11 in 2015 (Image source: vox.com)
In 1977, Jimmy Carter was the president, and NASA was working out to launch Voyager 1 & 2 to the outer planets. The aim was to make these two interstellar ambassadors. Less than nine months before its launch, Carl Sagan was asked to incorporate "some message for a possible extraterrestrial civilization" by NASA personnel. One of Sagan’s team members narrated the process as “a fire drill with nothing less at stake than First Contact itself.”
This Voyager surely has a story to tell about Earth. Symbols are engraved on the record to show the extraterrestrials how to operate it. This device was the brilliant work of James G. Lee's record-processing centre in Gardena, California. We just hope they find it and send a message back to us. It will be our biggest achievement, and everyone’s dream of exploring other planets will come true.
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