Is Love Encoded in the Voyager Golden Record?

[BobG]

Carl Sagan and his wife, Ann Druyan, fell in love and decided to marry while creating the "Golden Record" contained on the Voyager satellites launched in 1977. The "Golden Record" contains images, sounds, greetings, and music from the Planet Earth (in fact, Sagan and Druyan decided to get married the day they finally found a song to represent China, "Flowing Streams"). Included are instructions on how to recreate the images from the signals recorded on the records (the records are the standard, grooved, analog recordings).

In addition to diagrams of human anatomy, human DNA, etc, Sagan, Druyan, and the others compiling the record included something rather ingenious. Druyan had her brain waves recorded and included on the record to provide a sample of human thought. The recording was done just a couple days after Sagan and Druyan proposed to each other, so she couldn't resist making sure that her thoughts of love for Carl were included in the brain waves recorded.

Now, those thoughts of love are 16.9 billion miles and 13.8 billion miles away, respectively (the records were put on two different Voyager satellites).

Which should answer the question about whether scientists/techies are boring. They're not. In fact, they're incredibly clever and romantic.

Carl Sagan And Ann Druyan's Ultimate Mix Tape

Samples of songs included on the Golden Record (including Johnny B Goode)

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/voyager_record/ (click on the Flash Feature - it's a pretty cool little sample of what's on the record)

 

[Evo]

This was during the hump back whale song craze. We sent whale songs.

 

[hypatia]

We can look forward to a Love V'ger.

 

[IMP]

I just hope that the aliens who find the album don't make any copies of it. First contact will be RIAA vs. Aliens...

 

[MotoH]

This appears to be knowing distribution of copyrighted material. The RIAA will be notified.


We didn't send any rock music? No AC/DC or KISS? Oh but classical music was sent. And whale sounds? Oh man!

 

[leroyjenkens]

I hope the aliens have a record player.
But of course, they'll probably be smart enough to somehow transfer it to their iPods.

 

[BobG]

I just hope that the aliens who find the album don't make any copies of it. First contact will be RIAA vs. Aliens...

Funny that you mentioned that. They put out a book (now out of print) detailing the project, including all of the material put on the records. They also put out a CD including the music (also now out of print). The CD came out 14 years later because they had to clear all the copyright issues with the music first (but on the bright side, they didn't even have CD's when recordings were first made).

And anyone can make a record player. All you need is a turntable, a needle, and a cone of paper.

 

[Evo]

Funny that you mentioned that. They put out a book (now out of print) detailing the project, including all of the material put on the records. They also put out a CD including the music (also now out of print). The CD came out 14 years later because they had to clear all the copyright issues with the music first (but on the bright side, they didn't even have CD's when recordings were first made).

And anyone can make a record player. All you need is a turntable, a needle, and a cone of paper.

Do you think if it were made today that we would have included whale songs? I know it was really cool back then and people made music records to go with the sounds. Will ET think we have a society that worships whales?

I guess an interesting question would be, if we were doing it today, what should we record that we think represents us? I'm a bit disappointed about some of the stuff that was chosen.

 

[MotoH]

The US will be represented by Bruce Springsteen.

The Germans will of course be represented by David Hasselhoff.

The Canadians will simply be represented by recordings of Bob and Doug McKenzie.

The Russians will have a recording by Vladdy.


Anything else?

 

[Evo]

The US will be represented by Bruce Springsteen.

The Germans will of course be represented by David Hasselhoff.

The Canadians will simply be represented by recordings of Bob and Doug McKenzie.

The Russians will have a recording by Vladdy.


Anything else?

 

[fuzzyfelt]

That is fascinating!

We didn't send any rock music? No AC/DC or KISS? Oh but classical music was sent. And whale sounds? Oh man!

Johnny B Goode?

 

[robertm]

Funny that you mentioned that. They put out a book (now out of print) detailing the project, including all of the material put on the records.

The book is Murmurs of Earth, and I highly recommend it.

I hope the aliens have a record player.

Don't worry, we included a 'read me':

This is quoted from the book:

The etched message on the aluminim cover of the Voyager Record. In the upper left-hand corner is an easily recognized drawing of the phonograph record and the stylus carried with it. The stylus is in the correct position to play the record from the begining. Written around it in binary arithmetic 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 and srylus, with a binary number giving the time to play one side of the record- about an hour.

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 that occurs at the start of a picture. The picture is made from this signal, which traces the picrure as a series of vertical lines, similar to ordinary 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 a staggered "interlace" to give the correct picture rendition. Immediately below this is a drawing of an entire picture raster, showing that there are 512 vertical lines in a complete picture. Immediately below that 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 the picture to insure that the recipients use the correct ratio of horizontal to vertical height in picture reconstruction.

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.

Electroplated onto the record's cover is an ultra-pure source of uranium-238 with a radioactive of about 0.00026 microcuries. The steady decay of the uranium source into its daughter isotopes makes it a kind of radioactive clock. Half of the uranium-238 will decay in 4.51 billion years. Thus, by examining this two-centimeter diameter area on the record plate and measuring the amount of daughter elements to remaining uranium-238, an extraterrestrial recipient of the Voyager spacecraft could calculate the time elapsed since a spot of uranium was placed abouard the spacecraft . This should be a check on the epoch of launch, which is also described by the pulsar map on the record cover.

 

[Borek]

I wonder - in the times of identity theft, don't we give away too much information?

 

[lisab]

I wonder - in the times of identity theft, don't we give away too much information?

 

[BobG]

Do you think if it were made today that we would have included whale songs? I know it was really cool back then and people made music records to go with the sounds. Will ET think we have a society that worships whales?

I guess an interesting question would be, if we were doing it today, what should we record that we think represents us? I'm a bit disappointed about some of the stuff that was chosen.

Stranger yet was including the whale greetings at the tail end of the greetings from various members of the UN. They'll think the whale nation is a member of the UN (I think it's a whale greeting - since I don't understand whale, they might be urging the aliens to kill the humans).

We only had a 147 nations in the UN back in 1978 (we have 192 now).

If you go through the pictures (available at http://www.goldenrecord.org/), you'll notice that in the human biology section, the pictures of humans are shown in silhouette form. The original was a color photograph of naked humans. NASA didn't like the idea of including pictures of naked humans on the record.

 

[Evo]

I think this should go into our next one.