sometimes i think about the golden record and i want to cry
there is a disk. it is 12 inches in diameter, it is made of copper, plated with gold. there is an inscription— "To the makers of music – all worlds, all times" on its surface. it lies on the space probe, Voyager 1, launched in 1977, to explore interstellar space beyond our solar system.
it contains human existence.
116 images— the sun, the location of our solar system, mathematical and physical unit definitions, and our planets, including a blue and swirling white sphere simply labelled "Home." it contains images of human dna, of our atoms, their structure, the way they divide, our anatomy, our conception, our birth.
it does not contain an image of war. nor of disease, nor poverty, nor crime, religion, or ideology.
it does contain a father looking lovingly at his daughter. it does contain the picture of a tree toad in a gentle hand, of a woman eating a grape at a supermarket.
the remainder of the disk is audio. a 90-minute selection of music from all over the world, sounds, and greetings. there are greetings in 55 different languages, one akkadian, spoken in sumer about six thousand years ago, and one wu, a modern chinese dialect. the greetings call out to a friend. it wishes them well. it asks them if they have eaten yet.
but it contains other sounds too. it holds the sound of rain, of thunder, of a volcano and an earthquake. it holds the sound of mud pots and trains. it holds the sound of a mother kissing her child.
with little to erode it in space, the golden record would probably outlast all human creation. it will be 40,000 years before it approaches another planetary system. if it does, it cannot find intelligent life. intelligent life will have to find it, retrieve it from where it floats silent and small through space. we still don't know if they would understand it.
in 7.5 billion years, the evolution of the sun would burn the earth up, and we would not exist any longer, but the voyager would fly on, bearing a memory.
bearing a disk with a little inscription etched by hand on its surface.
the opening recording, by Kurt Waldheim:
"I send greetings on behalf of the people of our planet. We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship, to teach if we are called upon, to be taught if we are fortunate. We know full well that our planet and all its inhabitants are but a small part of the immense universe that surrounds us and it is with humility and hope that we take this step."
You missed my favorite detail! Ann Druyan, the creative director of the project, and Carl Sagan, the famous astronomer, fell in love while working on the project. One of the artifacts included is an EEG recording of Ann's brain just after the two scientists got engaged. The electric signal of love is literally embedded into the Golden Record and is currently wandering the universe in our human Permanent Record. Fantastic.
