Science What Is On Voyager's Golden Record?

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/What-Is-on-Voyagers-Golden-Record.html

One of the authors of the Golden Record also discusses where Voyager is at currently:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Timothy-Ferris-on-Voyagers-Never-Ending-Journey.html?onsite_source=relatedarticles&onsite_medium=internallink&onsite_campaign=SmithMag&onsite_content=Timothy%20Ferris%20on%20Voyagers%27%20Never-Ending%20Journey

this was fascinating and well written. something I knew very little about. cool stuff!

sagan campaigned for the beatles' 'here comes the sun' but was defeated. because the world is full of joyless assholes.

excellent thread JR

  Quote

Biologist Roger Payne provided a whale song (“the most beautiful whale greeting,” he said, and “the one that should last forever”) captured with hydrophones off the coast of Bermuda in 1970. Thinking that perhaps the whale song might make more sense to aliens than to humans, Ferris wanted to include more than a slice and so mixed some of the song behind the greetings in different languages. “That strikes some people as hilarious, but from a bandwidth standpoint, it worked quite well,” says Ferris. “It doesn’t interfere with the greetings, and if you are interested in the whale song, you can extract it.”

loved that bit

The whole thing is pretty fucking sad isn't it? Or "poignant", if you want to be more charitable...

  On 4/26/2012 at 6:02 AM, lumpenprol said:

  Quote

Biologist Roger Payne provided a whale song (“the most beautiful whale greeting,” he said, and “the one that should last forever”) captured with hydrophones off the coast of Bermuda in 1970. Thinking that perhaps the whale song might make more sense to aliens than to humans, Ferris wanted to include more than a slice and so mixed some of the song behind the greetings in different languages. “That strikes some people as hilarious, but from a bandwidth standpoint, it worked quite well,” says Ferris. “It doesn’t interfere with the greetings, and if you are interested in the whale song, you can extract it.”

 

loved that bit

 

The whole thing is pretty fucking sad isn't it? Or "poignant", if you want to be more charitable...

Wow, I thought I knew just about everything regarding the Voyager Golden Record, having read about it many times since I was a kid, but that was a new tidbit to me.

  On 4/26/2012 at 1:10 AM, kaini said:

sagan campaigned for the beatles' 'here comes the sun' but was defeated. because the world is full of joyless assholes.

Such a lovely song in every way...man you're right, what the fuck was EMI thinking? Or at least the soulless dick who made that decision. ಠ_ಠ

things like this remind me how beautiful humans can be.

i hope we last longer than the record :/

LOL, I never knew Johnny B. Goode was on it.

  On 4/26/2012 at 1:10 AM, kaini said:

sagan campaigned for the beatles' 'here comes the sun' but was defeated. because the world is full of joyless assholes.

I was sure there was a beatles song in it.

there's a wikipedia article listing its contents.

Nice read. I wish we could hear the audio montage that was on the record. I've always pictured it sounding awkward.

i wonder what it is statistically most likely to run into in space eventually? It would be funny to make a film that begins on earth with the creation of the plaques and then charts a journey through space lasting a few billion years with an emotive soundtrack which intensifies further as it hurtles, against all odds, towards a solar system containing lifeforms. The hairs on the back of your neck stand up with anticipation. Then at the climax you simply can not believe what you are seeing as it heads towards a planet that looks quite like Earth. You are near orgasm. The music soars. You are crying now. This is amazing. The music reaches its zenith at this point as it hurtles right past the planet into the sun.

there is already a file on us

"An obscure body of the S-K system, your majesty..."

  On 4/26/2012 at 5:20 PM, Hoodie said:

there's a wikipedia article listing its contents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contents_of_the_Voyager_Golden_Record

and there is this beautiful site that has the recorded audio you can play and images you can view

http://goldenrecord.org/

it reminds me of...

[youtubehd]jc-O6isekzE[/youtubehd]

  On 4/29/2012 at 5:35 PM, Rambo said:

i wonder what it is statistically most likely to run into in space eventually? It would be funny to make a film that begins on earth with the creation of the plaques and then charts a journey through space lasting a few billion years with an emotive soundtrack which intensifies further as it hurtles, against all odds, towards a solar system containing lifeforms. The hairs on the back of your neck stand up with anticipation. Then at the climax you simply can not believe what you are seeing as it heads towards a planet that looks quite like Earth. You are near orgasm. The music soars. You are crying now. This is amazing. The music reaches its zenith at this point as it hurtles right past the planet into the sun.

i was thinking "burns up on reentry, turns into an unrecognizable hunk of metal and confuses an alien farmer who uses parts of it to reinforce his shanty" but i think i like your idea better

  On 4/29/2012 at 5:35 PM, Rambo said:

i wonder what it is statistically most likely to run into in space eventually? It would be funny to make a film that begins on earth with the creation of the plaques and then charts a journey through space lasting a few billion years with an emotive soundtrack which intensifies further as it hurtles, against all odds, towards a solar system containing lifeforms. The hairs on the back of your neck stand up with anticipation. Then at the climax you simply can not believe what you are seeing as it heads towards a planet that looks quite like Earth. You are near orgasm. The music soars. You are crying now. This is amazing. The music reaches its zenith at this point as it hurtles right past the planet into the sun.

If you read the article, the likelyhood that it will run into anything is all but 0 due to the vast distances between objects in interstellar space. Ironically, I bet if we ever develop interstellar travel, we will one day search for it as a museum piece.

  On 4/29/2012 at 7:53 PM, Godwin Austen said:

and there is this beautiful site that has the recorded audio you can play and images you can view

 

http://goldenrecord.org/

 

Woah, I'll have to give that a listen!

I am descendant of the power that makes my person an actuality. I'm sorry if that actuality presents an actual person.

  On 4/29/2012 at 8:35 PM, Joyrex said:

  On 4/29/2012 at 5:35 PM, Rambo said:

i wonder what it is statistically most likely to run into in space eventually? It would be funny to make a film that begins on earth with the creation of the plaques and then charts a journey through space lasting a few billion years with an emotive soundtrack which intensifies further as it hurtles, against all odds, towards a solar system containing lifeforms. The hairs on the back of your neck stand up with anticipation. Then at the climax you simply can not believe what you are seeing as it heads towards a planet that looks quite like Earth. You are near orgasm. The music soars. You are crying now. This is amazing. The music reaches its zenith at this point as it hurtles right past the planet into the sun.

 

If you read the article, the likelyhood that it will run into anything is all but 0 due to the vast distances between objects in interstellar space. Ironically, I bet if we ever develop interstellar travel, we will one day search for it as a museum piece.

I recall that a reference to the Golden Record was made in the Transformers spin-off Beast Wars as the "Golden Disk" and Megatron left a message or some shit on it blah blah...

maybe voyager is a transformer for real

  On 5/1/2012 at 4:36 AM, jules said:

maybe voyager is a transformer for real

  On 5/1/2012 at 5:21 PM, theSun said:

  On 5/1/2012 at 4:36 AM, jules said:

maybe voyager is a transformer for real

Wrong

I have a CDROM called Murmurs of Earth with all the images, sounds and music contained on it. Very cool stuff. Also high res images for any one interested:

Here are the images contained, not high res.

images.tarFetching info...