Sunday, October 31, 2021

The Golden Record on the Voyager probes

 

[VIDEO] The Voyager program consisted of two probes who in the last decade have finally reached interstellar space. The probe Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977 which was 16 days before Voyager 1 on September 5, 1977. Both probes contain a golden record which you see analyzed in the above video.

It's amazing what the team that created this time capsule of our planet and civilization. It's designed to last at least a billion years and contains data such as audio and 116 pictures. The audio are sounds of our world of human voices, animals, weather, and samples of human music. Also contains a message from then President Jimmy Carter - he was POTUS when these probes were launched from Earth in 1977. There is also a message from then United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim.

As one member of the team that created this golden record Jon Lomberg stated this project was about dreaming big. That they did and what they did with the technology they had at the time - unless you're into vinyl records you won't find those in many homes today. They used phonograph technology to hold this amount of data for any extraterrestrials (or aliens).

You can check out all the contents of this golden record here. You can also see details of how it was manufactured via NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Want to see what music they selected for this record here's a playlist at Spotify.

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