Gold Records
Somewhere at the edge of interstellar space, a spacecraft we built five decades ago is moving faster than nearly anything else human beings have ever built.
If you looked for it with the most powerful telescopes ever made, you wouldn’t be able to see it. It’s just way, way too far away.
I’ve written about driving to the Moon and Sun before, and specifically how it would take about 100 years driving at 70 miles per hour (nonstop, no less) to get from the earth to the Sun. Scientists came up with a name for this distance—the Astronomical Unit, or AU for short.
The aptly named Voyager is currently 162 AUs away from us. By my math, if Voyager somehow stopped in its tracks right now, I could get there in about 17,000 years by driving. There was a second Voyager, too, so we refer to this particular Voyager as “Voyager 1.”
Not very creative, I’m afraid.
Along with the incredibly important array of sensory equipment, some of which is (incredibly) still functioning today, there is something else that’s really noteworthy.
To help me tell the story of Voyager’s Golden Record, I have brought in
, whom you might remember from this article on WIMPs and MACHOs, where we both talked about what dark matter is made of. Be sure to check out Mir’s work when you’re done here! I read his stuff regularly.The strategy behind this initiative was rooted in optimism and the universal desire to connect. We sought to create a message that could be understood by any civilization with the technological prowess to intercept the spacecraft. This message was intended to convey the diversity of our planet's cultures, sounds, and images.
The Golden Record was meticulously curated. It included the sounds of nature, such as thunderstorms and whales, greetings in 55 languages, a diverse selection of music from Bach to Chuck Berry, and over 100 images depicting human life, our environment, and scientific knowledge. This eclectic mix was chosen to portray the richness of life on Earth, aiming to be as inclusive and representative as possible.
That explains this side of the record:
But what about this side? Is this a bunch of scribble-scrabble?
Here’s Mir again to help answer this. Of note, Mir and I are both very interested in studying how languages have come to be, and Voyager’s Golden Record is such a great way to exemplify this shared interest:
Mathematics was chosen as the primary language for this message because of its universality. The diagrams on the record's cover provided instructions on how to play it, using mathematical and physical principles that we hoped would be universally recognised. This decision was based on the assumption that any civilisation capable of intercepting Voyager 1 would likely understand these fundamental concepts, making math a bridge between our worlds.
The very notion that this message is still traversing the cosmos, potentially to be found by intelligent life, fills me with awe. Think about it. This message could one day be the only remaining evidence that our world ever existed!
Incredible stuff! If the idea of including an LP seems anacrhonistic to you, you’re not alone. Fortunately for any would-be ETs who might eventually come across Voyager, the team at NASA included a record player.
To nobody’s surprise who grew up in the 70s or 80s, Carl Sagan led this team.
Let’s circle back to Voyager 1 one more time. Like Mir, I am in awe that Voyager is shooting away from us at 38,000 miles per hour, all by itself, deep in space. It’s further away than anything else we’ve made, and it contains a little capsule of our planet from around the time when I was born.
Clearly, my title today is a play on words. I head-faked toward musical commercial success, when I really wanted to talk about trying to create a language aliens might be able to interpret, and about the incredible story of Voyager. Why “Gold Records”, though?
To borrow a quote from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, “First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?”
Sure enough, Voyager 2 is out there with an identical record made of gold.
Do you think the team of scientists could have done a better job? What sorts of ideas would they have if they had access to today’s technology? Let’s think!
A record was a briliant choice. The technology to play it is simple enough that any decently advanced civilization could figure it out. I feel like I remember that there were pottery bowl "records" in the ancient world that were played by... I don't recall this part, because I'm now only remembering the X-Files episode about it... but I think it was with a fingertip in the groove.
One of the writers on the Medium publication I run wrote about these records too. They're incredible! I've been fascinated by them since I was a kid. The decisions behind what songs made the cut, how they records themselves were made, and how (if?) anyone would be able to hear them as intended.