Voyager Golden Record
Encyclopedia
The Voyager Golden Records are phonograph records which were included aboard both Voyager spacecraft
, which were launched in 1977. They contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life
form, or for future humans, who may find them. The Voyager spacecraft are not heading towards any particular star, but Voyager 1
will be within 1.6 light years of the star AC+79 3888
in the Ophiuchus
constellation in about 40,000 years.
As the probes are extremely small compared to the vastness of interstellar space, the probability of a space faring civilization encountering them is very small, especially since the probes will eventually stop emitting any kind of electromagnetic radiation. If they are ever found by an alien species, it will most likely be far in the future as the nearest star on Voyager 1's trajectory will only be reached in 40,000 years.
As Carl Sagan
noted, "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilization
s in interstellar space. But the launching of this 'bottle
' into the cosmic 'ocean' says something very hopeful about life on this planet." Thus the record is best seen as a time capsule
or a symbolic statement rather than a serious attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life.
s 10
and 11
, which were launched in 1972 and 1973 and preceded Voyager in outstripping the gravitational attraction of the Sun
, both carried small metal plaques
identifying their time and place of origin for the benefit of any other spacefarers that might find them in the distant future.
With this example before them, NASA placed a more comprehensive (and eclectic) message aboard Voyager
1
and 2
—a kind of time capsule
, intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials.
of Cornell University
. Dr. Sagan and his associates assembled 116 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind, and thunder, and animal sounds, including the songs of birds
and whales
. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, spoken greetings in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Jimmy Carter
and U.N.
Secretary-General
Kurt Waldheim
.
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 musical selection is also varied, featuring artists such as Beethoven, Guan Pinghu
, Mozart, Stravinsky and Chuck Berry
.
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.
The pulsar
map and hydrogen molecule diagram are shared in common with the Pioneer plaque
.
The 116 images are encoded in analogue form and composed of 512 vertical lines. The remainder of the record is audio, designed to be played at 16⅔ revolutions per minute.
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 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 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.
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.
upon it is an ultra-pure sample of the isotope uranium-238
. Uranium-238 has a half-life
of 4.51 billion years. It is possible that a civilization that encounters the record will be able to use the ratio of remaining uranium to daughter elements to determine the age of the record.
The records also had the sentence "To the makers of music — all worlds, all times" handwritten on them. Since this was not in the original disc specification, it almost caused their rejection.
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 1.7 light-year
s of two separate stars: Voyager 1 will have approached star AC+79 3888
, located in the constellation Ophiuchus
; and Voyager 2 will have approached star Ross 248, located in the constellation of Andromeda
.
In August 2009, Voyager 1 was over 16.5 billion km from the Sun and traveling at a speed of 3.5 AU
per year (approximately 61,000 km/h, or 38,000 mph) while Voyager 2 was well over 13 billion km away and moving at about 3.3 AU per year (approximately 56,000 km/h, or 35,000 mph).
Voyager 1 has entered the heliosheath, 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 to 700 km per second (700,000–1,500,000 miles per hour) and becomes denser and hotter.
, F.D. Drake
, Ann Druyan
, Timothy Ferris
, Jon Lomberg, and Linda Salzman. A CD-ROM
version was issued by Warner New Media in 1992. The CD-ROM was the result of Sagan's diligence in obtaining copyright clearances for many of the numerous musical passages and photographs that the original Golden Record contained, to allow for their inclusion in the Warner New Media release. (The copyright owners for the images and music on the actual record signed agreements which only permitted the replay of their works outside of the solar system.) Because copyright clearances could not be obtained one image in the book and a different image on the CD-ROM are not included. Both the book and the companion CD-ROM are no longer published, although used copies may still be found in many libraries. Further information is available at: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/faq.html
In July, 1983, BBC Radio 4
broadcast the 45-minute documentary Music from a Small Planet, in which Sagan and Druyan explained the process of selecting music for the record and introduced excerpts. It was not clear whether this was an original BBC
documentary or an imported NPR
production.
Voyager program
The Voyager program is a U.S program that launched two unmanned space missions, scientific probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable planetary alignment of the late 1970s...
, which were launched in 1977. They contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...
form, or for future humans, who may find them. The Voyager spacecraft are not heading towards any particular star, but Voyager 1
Voyager 1
The Voyager 1 spacecraft is a 722-kilogram space probe launched by NASA in 1977, to study the outer Solar System and eventually interstellar space. Operating for as of today , the spacecraft receives routine commands and transmits data back to the Deep Space Network. At a distance of as of...
will be within 1.6 light years of the star AC+79 3888
AC+79 3888
AC+79 3888 is an M-type main sequence star in the constellation of Camelopardalis, close to Polaris. It has no name other than its catalog designations. AC+79 3888 is currently 17.6 light-years from the Sun and has an apparent magnitude of 10.8...
in the Ophiuchus
Ophiuchus
Ophiuchus is a large constellation located around the celestial equator. Its name is from the Greek "serpent-bearer", and it is commonly represented as a man grasping the snake that is represented by the constellation Serpens. Ophiuchus was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century...
constellation in about 40,000 years.
As the probes are extremely small compared to the vastness of interstellar space, the probability of a space faring civilization encountering them is very small, especially since the probes will eventually stop emitting any kind of electromagnetic radiation. If they are ever found by an alien species, it will most likely be far in the future as the nearest star on Voyager 1's trajectory will only be reached in 40,000 years.
As Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books...
noted, "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilization
Civilization
Civilization is a sometimes controversial term that has been used in several related ways. Primarily, the term has been used to refer to the material and instrumental side of human cultures that are complex in terms of technology, science, and division of labor. Such civilizations are generally...
s in interstellar space. But the launching of this 'bottle
Message in a bottle
A message in a bottle is a form of communication whereby a message is sealed in a container and released into the sea or ocean...
' into the cosmic 'ocean' says something very hopeful about life on this planet." Thus the record is best seen as a time capsule
Time capsule
A time capsule is an historic cache of goods or information, usually intended as a method of communication with future people and to help future archaeologists, anthropologists, or historians...
or a symbolic statement rather than a serious attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life.
Background
, the two Voyager spacecraft became the third and fourth human artifacts to escape entirely from the solar system. PioneerPioneer program
The Pioneer program is a series of United States unmanned space missions that was designed for planetary exploration. There were a number of such missions in the program, but the most notable were Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, which explored the outer planets and left the solar system...
s 10
Pioneer 10
Pioneer 10 is a 258-kilogram robotic space probe that completed the first interplanetary mission to Jupiter, and became the first spacecraft to achieve escape velocity from the Solar System. The project was managed by the NASA Ames Research Center and the contract for the construction of the...
and 11
Pioneer 11
Pioneer 11 is a 259-kilogram robotic space probe launched by NASA on April 6, 1973 to study the asteroid belt, the environment around Jupiter and Saturn, solar wind, cosmic rays, and eventually the far reaches of the solar system and heliosphere...
, which were launched in 1972 and 1973 and preceded Voyager in outstripping the gravitational attraction of the Sun
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...
, both carried small metal plaques
Pioneer plaque
The Pioneer plaques are a pair of gold-anodized aluminium plaques which were placed on board the 1972 Pioneer 10 and 1973 Pioneer 11 spacecraft, featuring a pictorial message, in case either Pioneer 10 or 11 are intercepted by extraterrestrial life...
identifying their time and place of origin for the benefit of any other spacefarers that might find them in the distant future.
With this example before them, NASA placed a more comprehensive (and eclectic) message aboard Voyager
Voyager program
The Voyager program is a U.S program that launched two unmanned space missions, scientific probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable planetary alignment of the late 1970s...
1
Voyager 1
The Voyager 1 spacecraft is a 722-kilogram space probe launched by NASA in 1977, to study the outer Solar System and eventually interstellar space. Operating for as of today , the spacecraft receives routine commands and transmits data back to the Deep Space Network. At a distance of as of...
and 2
Voyager 2
The Voyager 2 spacecraft is a 722-kilogram space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977 to study the outer Solar System and eventually interstellar space...
—a kind of time capsule
Time capsule
A time capsule is an historic cache of goods or information, usually intended as a method of communication with future people and to help future archaeologists, anthropologists, or historians...
, intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials.
Contents
The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl SaganCarl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books...
of Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
. Dr. Sagan and his associates assembled 116 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind, and thunder, and animal sounds, including the songs of birds
Bird song
Bird vocalization includes both bird calls and bird songs. In non-technical use, bird songs are the bird sounds that are melodious to the human ear. In ornithology and birding, songs are distinguished by function from calls.-Definition:The distinction between songs and calls is based upon...
and whales
Whale song
Whale sounds are the sounds made by whales and which are used for different kinds of communication.The word "song" is used to describe the pattern of regular and predictable sounds made by some species of whales, notably the Humpback Whale...
. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, spoken greetings in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
and U.N.
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
Secretary-General
United Nations Secretary-General
The Secretary-General of the United Nations is the head of the Secretariat of the United Nations, one of the principal organs of the United Nations. The Secretary-General also acts as the de facto spokesperson and leader of the United Nations....
Kurt Waldheim
Kurt Waldheim
Kurt Josef Waldheim was an Austrian diplomat and politician. Waldheim was the fourth Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981, and the ninth President of Austria, from 1986 to 1992...
.
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 musical selection is also varied, featuring artists such as Beethoven, Guan Pinghu
Guan Pinghu
Guan Pinghu , was a leading player of the guqin , a Chinese 7-string bridgeless zither. Born in Suzhou, Jiangsu, Guan came from an artistic family, and started to learn the guqin from his father, Guan Nianci. After the death of his father when he was thirteen, Guan continued with his father’s...
, Mozart, Stravinsky and Chuck Berry
Chuck Berry
Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" , "Roll Over Beethoven" , "Rock and Roll Music" and "Johnny B...
.
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.
The pulsar
Pulsar
A pulsar is a highly magnetized, rotating neutron star that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation. The radiation can only be observed when the beam of emission is pointing towards the Earth. This is called the lighthouse effect and gives rise to the pulsed nature that gives pulsars their name...
map and hydrogen molecule diagram are shared in common with the Pioneer plaque
Pioneer plaque
The Pioneer plaques are a pair of gold-anodized aluminium plaques which were placed on board the 1972 Pioneer 10 and 1973 Pioneer 11 spacecraft, featuring a pictorial message, in case either Pioneer 10 or 11 are intercepted by extraterrestrial life...
.
The 116 images are encoded in analogue form and composed of 512 vertical lines. The remainder of the record is audio, designed to be played at 16⅔ revolutions per minute.
Playback
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 beginning. 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 stylus, 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, which traces the picture 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 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.
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.
Materials
The record is constructed of gold-plated copper. The record's cover is aluminium and electroplatedElectroplating
Electroplating is a plating process in which metal ions in a solution are moved by an electric field to coat an electrode. The process uses electrical current to reduce cations of a desired material from a solution and coat a conductive object with a thin layer of the material, such as a metal...
upon it is an ultra-pure sample of the isotope uranium-238
Uranium-238
Uranium-238 is the most common isotope of uranium found in nature. It is not fissile, but is a fertile material: it can capture a slow neutron and after two beta decays become fissile plutonium-239...
. Uranium-238 has a half-life
Half-life
Half-life, abbreviated t½, is the period of time it takes for the amount of a substance undergoing decay to decrease by half. The name was originally used to describe a characteristic of unstable atoms , but it may apply to any quantity which follows a set-rate decay.The original term, dating to...
of 4.51 billion years. It is possible that a civilization that encounters the record will be able to use the ratio of remaining uranium to daughter elements to determine the age of the record.
The records also had the sentence "To the makers of music — all worlds, all times" handwritten on them. Since this was not in the original disc specification, it almost caused their rejection.
Journey
Voyager 1Voyager 1
The Voyager 1 spacecraft is a 722-kilogram space probe launched by NASA in 1977, to study the outer Solar System and eventually interstellar space. Operating for as of today , the spacecraft receives routine commands and transmits data back to the Deep Space Network. At a distance of as of...
was launched in 1977, passed the orbit of Pluto
Pluto
Pluto, formal designation 134340 Pluto, is the second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the tenth-most-massive body observed directly orbiting the Sun...
in 1990, and left the solar system
Solar System
The Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...
(in the sense of passing the termination shock) in November 2004. It is now in the Kuiper Belt
Kuiper belt
The Kuiper belt , sometimes called the Edgeworth–Kuiper belt, is a region of the Solar System beyond the planets extending from the orbit of Neptune to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt, although it is far larger—20 times as wide and 20 to 200 times as massive...
. In about 40,000 years, it and Voyager 2
Voyager 2
The Voyager 2 spacecraft is a 722-kilogram space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977 to study the outer Solar System and eventually interstellar space...
will each come to within about 1.7 light-year
Light-year
A light-year, also light year or lightyear is a unit of length, equal to just under 10 trillion kilometres...
s of two separate stars: Voyager 1 will have approached star AC+79 3888
AC+79 3888
AC+79 3888 is an M-type main sequence star in the constellation of Camelopardalis, close to Polaris. It has no name other than its catalog designations. AC+79 3888 is currently 17.6 light-years from the Sun and has an apparent magnitude of 10.8...
, located in the constellation Ophiuchus
Ophiuchus
Ophiuchus is a large constellation located around the celestial equator. Its name is from the Greek "serpent-bearer", and it is commonly represented as a man grasping the snake that is represented by the constellation Serpens. Ophiuchus was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century...
; and Voyager 2 will have approached star Ross 248, located in the constellation of Andromeda
Andromeda (constellation)
Andromeda is a constellation in the northern sky. It is named after Andromeda, the princess in the Greek legend of Perseus who was chained to a rock to be eaten by the sea monster Cetus...
.
In August 2009, Voyager 1 was over 16.5 billion km from the Sun and traveling at a speed of 3.5 AU
Astronomical unit
An astronomical unit is a unit of length equal to about or approximately the mean Earth–Sun distance....
per year (approximately 61,000 km/h, or 38,000 mph) while Voyager 2 was well over 13 billion km away and moving at about 3.3 AU per year (approximately 56,000 km/h, or 35,000 mph).
Voyager 1 has entered the heliosheath, 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 to 700 km per second (700,000–1,500,000 miles per hour) and becomes denser and hotter.
In popular culture
- The motion picture StarmanStarman (film)John Carpenter's Starman is a 1984 science-fiction fantasy film directed by John Carpenter that tells the story of an alien who has come to Earth in response to the invitation found on the gold phonograph record installed on the Voyager 2 space probe.The screenplay was written by Bruce A. Evans,...
portrayed the Voyager Golden Record as having been located by an extraterrestrial intelligence who subsequently sent one of their own race to investigate intelligent life on Earth. - In a Saturday Night LiveSaturday Night LiveSaturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
segment ("Next Week in Review") in episode 64 of the show's third seasonSaturday Night Live (Season 3)Saturday Night Live aired its third season during the 1977–1978 television season on NBC. The season began on September 24, 1977 and ended on May 20, 1978. The DVD for the entire season was released on May 13, 2008....
, Steve Martin'sSteve MartinStephen Glenn "Steve" Martin is an American actor, comedian, writer, playwright, producer, musician and composer....
character, a psychic named Cocuwa, predicts that the cover of Time MagazineTime (magazine)Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
for the upcoming week will show the four words "Send more Chuck Berry," which had supposedly been sent from extraterrestrials to Earth the week before. - In an episode of Pinky and the BrainPinky and the BrainPinky and the Brain is an American animated television series.The characters Pinky and the Brain first appeared in 1993 as a recurring segment on the show Animaniacs...
, Brain changes the design of the Golden Disk so that it shows his and Pinky's body as that of the leaders of Earth. When aliens intercept the disk, they capture Pinky and Brain as pets, thinking them to be the leaders of Earth. - In the speculative nonfiction series Life After PeopleLife After PeopleLife After People is a television documentary series where scientists and other experts speculate about what the Earth might be like if humanity no longer existed, as well as the impact humanity's disappearance might have on the environment and the artificial aspects of civilization...
it is stated that, after a million years of travel in interstellar space, the Voyager probes will be so heavily damaged from micrometeoroidMicrometeoroidA micrometeoroid is a tiny meteoroid; a small particle of rock in space, usually weighing less than a gram. A micrometeor or micrometeorite is such a particle that enters the Earth's atmosphere or falls to Earth.-Scientific interest:...
impacts that the disks will likely become unreadable. This process will be dependent on the frequency of particle impacts upon the spacecraft in interstellar space. - A key plot element of the 1994 science fiction film Without Warning involves an alien race having intercepted Voyager and relaying part of the UN Secretary-General's message back to Earth.
- In the Transformers spinoff Beast WarsBeast WarsTransformers: Beast Wars is a Transformers toyline released by Hasbro between 1995 and 2000, and a Daytime Emmy Award winning full-CG animated television series spawned by it that debuted in 1996...
, one of the discs is a key plot point that sets the series in motion.
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 SaganCarl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books...
, F.D. Drake
Frank Drake
Frank Donald Drake PhD is an American astronomer and astrophysicist. He is most notable as one of the pioneers in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, including the founding of SETI, mounting the first observational attempts at detecting extraterrestrial communications in 1961 in Project...
, Ann Druyan
Ann Druyan
Ann Druyan is an American author and producer specializing in productions about cosmology and popular science. She made substantial contributions to the PBS documentary series, Cosmos, and was the wife of late scientist and educator, Carl Sagan.-Film career:Along with Carl Sagan and Steven Soter,...
, Timothy Ferris
Timothy Ferris
Timothy Ferris is a science writer and the best-selling author of twelve books, including The Science of Liberty and Coming of Age in the Milky Way , for which he was awarded the American Institute of Physics Prize and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize...
, Jon Lomberg, and Linda Salzman. A CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
version was issued by Warner New Media in 1992. The CD-ROM was the result of Sagan's diligence in obtaining copyright clearances for many of the numerous musical passages and photographs that the original Golden Record contained, to allow for their inclusion in the Warner New Media release. (The copyright owners for the images and music on the actual record signed agreements which only permitted the replay of their works outside of the solar system.) Because copyright clearances could not be obtained one image in the book and a different image on the CD-ROM are not included. Both the book and the companion CD-ROM are no longer published, although used copies may still be found in many libraries. Further information is available at: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/faq.html
In July, 1983, BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
broadcast the 45-minute documentary Music from a Small Planet, in which Sagan and Druyan explained the process of selecting music for the record and introduced excerpts. It was not clear whether this was an original BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
documentary or an imported NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
production.
See also
- Communication with Extraterrestrial IntelligenceCommunication with Extraterrestrial IntelligenceCommunication with extraterrestrial intelligence is a branch of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence that focuses on composing and deciphering messages that could theoretically be understood by another technological civilization. The best-known CETI experiment was the 1974 Arecibo message...
- Pioneer plaquePioneer plaqueThe Pioneer plaques are a pair of gold-anodized aluminium plaques which were placed on board the 1972 Pioneer 10 and 1973 Pioneer 11 spacecraft, featuring a pictorial message, in case either Pioneer 10 or 11 are intercepted by extraterrestrial life...
- Time capsuleTime capsuleA time capsule is an historic cache of goods or information, usually intended as a method of communication with future people and to help future archaeologists, anthropologists, or historians...
External links
- Official NASA JPL page about the Golden Record
- Multimedia showcase with the contents of the Golden Record
- Web site with all of the images, languages, and sounds on the Record.
- CED Magic Web site information on the Record.
- Cosmic Journey: The Voyager Interstellar Mission and Message
- The Billion Year Portfolio by Jon Lomberg, artist on the Voyager Record
- U Iowa website with Termination Shock information
- The Next Voyager Record: A Qatsi Perspective
- John Cohen and the Voyager Record from The Celestial Monochord
- Article on Ithaca, NY connections to the Voyager Record, 30th anniversary, page 11
- NYT 30th Anniversary OP-ED article by Timothy Ferris, who supervised the production of the disc
- NPR.org: Voyagers' Records Wait for Alien Ears
- David Munrow and the Voyager Golden Record
- WNYC Radiolab interview with Ann Druyan on her role in the making of the Voyager Record, May 12, 2006
- Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Voyager Record Cover
- Interview with Jon Lomberg on Australia's Radio National The Science Show, November 19, 2005