Sounds (.ra) or (.wav)On the plaque a man and woman stand before an outline of the spacecraft. The man's hand is raised in a gesture of good will. The physical makeup of the man and woman were determined from results of a computerized analysis of the average person in our civilization.
The key to translating the plaque lies in understanding the breakdown of the most common element in the universe - hydrogen. This element is illustrated in the left-hand corner of the plaque in schematic form showing the hyperfine transition of neutral atomic hydrogen. Anyone from a scientifically educated civilization having enough knowledge of hydrogen would be able to translate the message. The plaque was designed by Dr. Carl Sagan and Dr. Frank Drake and drawn by Linda Salzman Sagan.
With this example before them, NASA placed a more ambitious message
aboard Voyager 1 and 2-a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate
a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried
by a phonograph record-a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds
and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture
on Earth. The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee
chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University. Dr. Sagan and his associates
assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made
by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals. To this they
added musical selections form different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings
from Earth-people in fifty-five languages, and printed messaged from President
Carter and U.N. Secretary General Waldheim. Each record is encased in a
protective aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and a needle. Instructions,
in symbolic language, explain the origin of the spacecraft and indicate
how the record is to be played. The 115 images are encoded in analog
form. The remainder of the record is in audio, designed to be played at
16-2/3 revolutions per second. It contains the spoken greetings,
beginning with Akkadian, which was spoken in Sumer about six thousand years
ago, and ending with Wu, a modern Chinese dialect. Following the section
on the sounds of Earth, there is an eclectic 90-minute selection
of music, including both Eastern and Western classics and a variety
of ethnic music. Once the Voyager spacecraft leave the solar system (by
1990, both will be beyond the orbit of Pluto), they will find themselves
in empty space. It will be forty thousand years before they make a close
approach to any other planetary system. As Carl Sagan has noted, "The spacecraft
will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring
civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle
into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on
this planet."
Images
Sounds (.ra) or (.wav)
Languages (.ra) or (.au)
Music