Voyager Golden Record

Imagine a message in a bottle, cast not into the ocean, but into the vast, cosmic sea of interstellar space—a message from humanity, intended for any intelligent life that might one day find it. This is the Voyager Golden Record, a shimmering phonograph record launched aboard the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft in 1977. It's an extraordinary time capsule, carrying the sounds, images, and cultural tapestry of Earth, representing our hopes and dreams across billions of miles and millennia. The Voyager Golden Record is a meticulously curated time capsule of Earth's life and culture, designed to be played by any extraterrestrial civilization that discovers it. Despite its symbolic purpose, the record includes detailed scientific instructions for playback and interpretation, embedding universal constants for a truly cosmic communication. Decades after their launch, the Voyager probes, carrying these records, continue their journey into interstellar space, making them humanity's farthest and longest-lasting ambassadors.

Source: Wikipedia

AI Summary

Imagine a message in a bottle, cast not into the ocean, but into the vast, cosmic sea of interstellar space—a message from humanity, intended for any intelligent life that might one day find it. This is the Voyager Golden Record, a shimmering phonograph record launched aboard the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft in 1977. It's an extraordinary time capsule, carrying the sounds, images, and cultural tapestry of Earth, representing our hopes and dreams across billions of miles and millennia.

A Cosmic Message in a Bottle

In 1977, NASA launched two extraordinary spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, on a grand tour of our solar system. Aboard each probe, nestled safely within an aluminum cover, was a gleaming, gold-plated copper disk—the Voyager Golden Record. This wasn't just a piece of hardware; it was humanity's most ambitious attempt at interstellar communication.

These records are identical phonograph discs, much like the LPs from the late 20th century, but designed for an audience far beyond Earth. They contain a carefully selected collection of sounds and images, intended to paint a portrait of life and culture on our home planet for any intelligent extraterrestrial civilization that might intercept them.

While neither Voyager is specifically targeted at a star, their trajectories will eventually bring them close to others. For instance, Voyager 1 is projected to pass within 1.6 light-years of the star Gliese 445 in approximately 40,000 years. It's a journey spanning timescales almost incomprehensible to us.

As astronomer Carl Sagan, a key figure in the record's creation, eloquently put it: 'The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space, but the launching of this 'bottle' into the cosmic 'ocean' says something very hopeful about life on this planet.'

From Pioneer Plaques to Golden Records

The concept of sending a message into space wasn't entirely new. Years before, NASA's Pioneer 10 and 11 probes carried a simpler, etched plaque designed by Eric Burgess and Carl Sagan. This precedent laid the groundwork for the more complex Voyager mission. Project manager John R. Casani took the initiative to include a message on the Voyagers, entrusting the ambitious task to Sagan.

Sagan, along with colleagues Linda Salzman and Frank Drake, realized that a metal phonograph record, encoded with both audio and visual information, would be far more durable than magnetic tapes in the harsh environment of deep space. They were given a modest budget and a tight six-week deadline, yet their passion led them to contribute personal funds and countless hours to the project.

The team saw the record not just as a scientific endeavor, but as a profound gesture. One of the included messages, drafted by Jimmy Carter, captured this sentiment: '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: A Portrait of Earth

Selecting what would represent all of humanity for an alien civilization was an immense challenge. A committee chaired by Carl Sagan spent almost a year curating the contents. Their choices included 116 images—one for calibration—and a rich tapestry of natural sounds, from crashing surf and thunder to the songs of birds and whales.

To this natural soundscape, they added the voice of humanity: spoken greetings in 55 ancient and modern languages. These ranged from Sumerian to Mandarin, even including a greeting from UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim and Carl Sagan's six-year-old son, Nick. Other human sounds, like footsteps and laughter—Sagan's own—were included, alongside the inspirational Morse code message 'Per aspera ad astra' ('Through hardship to the stars').

The visual component comprised photographs and diagrams, both black and white and color. The initial images are scientific, illustrating mathematical principles, the Solar System, DNA structure, and human anatomy and reproduction. Crucially, these scientific diagrams are annotated with universal physical constants, providing a common language for any intelligent recipient.

Beyond science, the images depicted the diversity of life on Earth—animals, insects, plants, and breathtaking landscapes. Humanity was represented through a broad range of cultures, showing architecture, food, portraits, and people engaged in their daily lives. Scale and chemical composition are often indicated, anchored by fundamental physical constants.

Music and Controversy

The musical selection is equally diverse, spanning millennia and cultures. It features classical works by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Stravinsky, alongside traditional music from China, India, and Bulgaria. Jazz legend Louis Armstrong, blues pioneer Blind Willie Johnson, and rock-and-roll icon Chuck Berry also made the cut with 'Johnny B. Goode.'

The inclusion of 'Johnny B. Goode' sparked debate, with some arguing rock music was too 'adolescent.' Sagan famously countered that 'There are a lot of adolescents on the planet.' Another proposed inclusion, The Beatles' 'Here Comes the Sun,' was ultimately blocked due to complex copyright issues, despite the band's alleged enthusiasm. It highlights the earthly challenges faced even in a cosmic endeavor.

Perhaps the most intimate inclusion is an hour-long recording of Ann Druyan's brainwaves, compressed into a minute of audio. Druyan, the creative director for the project (and later Carl Sagan's wife), meditated on Earth's history, civilizations, their struggles, and the profound experience of falling in love during this recording. It’s a truly personal touch from humanity.

How to Play a Cosmic Record

To help any potential extraterrestrial finders understand the record, its gold-plated aluminum cover is etched with universal symbols and instructions. The upper left diagram shows how to play the record, indicating the correct stylus position and the playback speed: 3.6 seconds per rotation, defined by the fundamental transition of a hydrogen atom.

This diagram uses a time unit derived from the hyperfine transition of a hydrogen atom, a universal constant that any advanced civilization should understand. Specifically, it refers to the period of radiation emitted or absorbed by the fundamental transition of the hydrogen atom, which is approximately 0.70 billionths of a second. This ensures the correct playback speed of 16 and 2/3 revolutions per minute.

\Delta t = \frac{1}{v} = \frac{h}{E} = \frac{1}{1420 \text{ MHz}} \approx 0.704 \text{ ns}

The upper right diagrams explain how to reconstruct the 116 encoded images. These are raster-scan images, much like early analog television, with 512 vertical lines. Instructions show how to interpret the signals, the duration of each line (about 8 milliseconds), and even how to correct for aspect ratio using a calibration circle in the first image. Color images are represented by three sequential scans for red, green, and blue components.

In the lower left, a pulsar map charts the location of our Solar System relative to 14 pulsars, whose precise rotation periods are also given. These celestial beacons act as a cosmic address, allowing finders to pinpoint Earth's origin in space and time. A diagram of the hydrogen atom, with its lowest energy states, provides a fundamental time scale for all measurements.

Crafted for Eternity

The Golden Record itself is a 12-inch copper disk, coated first with nickel and then a protective layer of gold, ensuring its survival for billions of years. Its aluminum cover is electroplated with an ultra-pure sample of uranium-238. This element has an incredibly long half-life of 4.468 billion years.

Any civilization encountering the record could use the ratio of the remaining uranium to its decay products to determine the record's age. This ingenious cosmic clock provides an objective timeline of when the message was launched, tying it irrevocably to its moment of creation in the universe's grand narrative.

N(t) = N_0 \left(\frac{1}{2}\right)^{\frac{t}{T_{1/2}}}

An unexpected, heartwarming detail: a hand-etched inscription in the record's 'dead wax' reads: 'To the makers of music – all worlds, all times.' This spontaneous addition, initially causing a brief rejection, was ultimately approved by Sagan, adding a touch of human artistry to a scientific marvel.

The Interstellar Journey Continues

Launched in 1977, both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have achieved incredible milestones. Voyager 1 passed the orbit of Pluto in 1990 and famously left the Solar System's 'termination shock' in 2004. In September 2013, NASA announced Voyager 1 had officially entered interstellar space, the region between the stars where the solar wind no longer dominates.

As of 2023, Voyager 1 is over 24 billion kilometers from the Sun, traveling at roughly 61,000 km/h. Voyager 2, not far behind, is also in interstellar space, over 20 billion kilometers away and moving at around 56,000 km/h. They are the farthest human-made objects ever, true pioneers of the cosmic frontier.

Even after decades, some instruments on both Voyagers remain operational, diligently sending back data from the uncharted reaches of space. While their power sources will eventually deplete, the Golden Records themselves will continue their silent journey, enduring for billions of years—a testament to humanity's curiosity and its enduring hope for connection.

Article

Voyager Golden Record

The Voyager Golden Records are two identical phonograph records, with one copy aboard each of the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977. The records contain sounds and data to reconstruct raster scan 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.

Although neither Voyager spacecraft is heading toward any particular star, Voyager 1 will pass within 1.6 light-years' distance of the star Gliese 445, currently in the constellation Camelopardalis, in about 40,000 years.

Carl Sagan noted that "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space, but the launching of this 'bottle' into the cosmic 'ocean' says something very hopeful about life on this planet."

Background

Voyager Golden Record

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. Like their predecessors Pioneer 10 and (/wiki/Pioneer11), which featured a simple plaque (the idea of Eric Burgess and Carl Sagan), 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.

While the Pioneer plaques established the precedent, the idea for including information on humanity onboard the Voyagers was the brainchild of John R. Casani, the project manager. He delegated the task to Sagan, who with colleagues Linda Salzman and Frank Drake realized a metal phonograph record with visual information (encoded into grooves by a company in Boulder, Colorado) would outlast magnetic tapes in the outer space environment. The budget Casani gave Sagan was $1,500 for six weeks of work (though Sagan and his colleagues contributed more money out of pocket); he stipulated the Record had to be as light as the Pioneer plaque.

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.

Contents

Voyager Golden Record

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-General Kurt Waldheim and a greeting by Sagan's six-year-old son Nick; other human sounds, like footsteps and laughter (Sagan's); 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.

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 constants that are the same across the universe.

The musical selection is also varied, featuring works by composers such as J. S. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Stravinsky. The disc also includes music by Guan Pinghu, Blind Willie Johnson, Louis Armstrong, Chuck Berry, Kesarbai Kerkar, Valya Balkanska, Kamil Jalilov, and electronic composer Laurie Spiegel. The selection of music for the record was completed by a team composed of Carl Sagan as project director, Linda Salzman, Frank Drake, Ann Druyan as creative director, artist Jon Lomberg, ethnomusicologists Robert E. Brown and Alan Lomax, Timothy Ferris as producer, and Jimmy Iovine as sound engineer. The inclusion of Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" was controversial, with Lomax claiming that rock music was "adolescent", to which Sagan replied, "There are a lot of adolescents on the planet." It also included the sounds of humpbacked whales from the 1970 album by Roger Payne, Songs of the Humpback Whale.

The Golden Record also carries an hour-long recording of the brainwaves of Ann Druyan, compressed into a minute of audio. 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.

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. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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." 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." However, this was denied in 2017 by Ferris; in his recollection, "Here Comes the Sun" was not seriously considered for inclusion.

In July 2015, NASA uploaded the audio contents of the record to the audio streaming service SoundCloud.

Images

• Select images on the Voyager Golden Record • A woman in a store • A photo of Jupiter with its diameter indicated • Depiction of humans licking, eating, and drinking as modes of consumption • A photo of the Arecibo Observatory marked with an indication of scale • A photo of page 6 from Isaac Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica Volume III, De mundi systemate (The System of the World) • A photograph of Egypt, Red Sea, Sinai Peninsula and the Nile from Earth orbit annotated with the chemical composition of Earth's atmosphere • "Diagram of vertebrate evolution", by Jon Lomberg

Playback

Voyager Golden Record

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 the radiation emitted or absorbed by 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. 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.

Manufacturing

Voyager Golden Record

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 that 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.

The record is a copper disk 12 inches (30 cm) in diameter plated first with nickel and then gold. 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.

The records also had the inscription "To the makers of music – all worlds, all times" hand-etched on its surface. The inscription is located in the dead wax or "run-out groove", 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.

• 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

Voyager Golden Record

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, 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 300–700 km/s (670,000–1,570,000 mph) and becomes denser and hotter.

In March 2012, Voyager 1 was over 17.9 billion kilometers (11.1 billion miles) from the Sun and traveling at a speed of 3.6 AU per year (approximately 61,000 km/h (38,000 mph)), while Voyager 2 was over 14.7 billion kilometers (9.1 billion miles) and moving at about 3.3 AU per year (approximately 56,000 km/h (35,000 mph)).

On September 12, 2013, NASA announced that Voyager 1 had left the heliosheath and entered interstellar space, although it still remains within the Sun's gravitational sphere of influence.

Of the eleven instruments carried on Voyager 1, four were still operational and continued to send back data as of 2023, and it was expected that at least one science instrument would remain operational through 2025 and that engineering data could be transmitted for several more years after that.

Publications

Voyager Golden Record

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. A CD-ROM version was issued by Warner New Media in 1992. 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).

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. 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. In January 2018, Ozma Records' Voyager Golden Record; 40th Anniversary Edition won a Grammy Award for best boxed or limited-edition package.

Track listing

Voyager Golden Record

The track listing is as it appears on the 2017 edition released by Ozma Records.