A mission that was supposed to last just five years is celebrating its 30th anniversary this fall. Scientists continue to receive data from the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft as they approach interstellar space.
The twin craft have become a fixture of pop culture, inspiring novels and playing a central role in television shows, music videos, songs and movies from the 1980s and 1990s. Many of these fictional works focus on what would happen if an alien race were able to locate Earth via Voyager’s famous golden records, which include sounds and images of Earth.
Although the chances of extraterrestials finding the message are extremely slim, the Voyager golden record has become an icon. “It’s the classic message in a bottle. The likelihood of finding it is small, but the payoff is huge if it is found,” said Ann Druyan, a science media producer and author. Druyan was creative director of the record project and later married Sagan.
“The record represented the idea that science and technology could come together with art,” said Druyan, who also designed the sound essay.. “It’s one of the few totally great stories that we have about humans. It cost the taxpayers virtually nothing, nobody got killed. It was a way to celebrate the glory of being alive on this tiny blue dot in 1977.
Really close-up, there is no surprise about scientists who are artists and vice-versa. Only those whose lifestyle stands them in little boxes apart from either – sometimes think there is an inherent contradiction.
I never thought this was such a good idea. It’s basically a map to earth and a list of what’s on the menu. It saves a hungry race of space pirates a lot of work finding us.
1. Agreed. It will be our doom.
only if the aliens still have a turntable tucked away somewhere, and what are the odds of that?
Why didn’t they outsource that art project to some preschoolers?! I’m sure they could have made it more interesting and colorful.
The illustrations show how to get sound off the record.
#1, you’re kidding– right?
#2, you’re being sarcastic, right?
#3, They have achieved interstellar travel and you think they cant make the disk rotate and draw a pointy object along the groove?
#4, Druyan was stretching it when she said it was art. It’s more of a graphic illustration to explain science, like you would find in a high-school science textbook.
I would not worry about aliens finding this and using it against us. It will take a LONG time for it to even travel the distance between us and our nearest stellar neighbor. From what I have read Proxima Centauri is about 74, 000 years distance for it to travel yet. If they are close enough to get the probe, they ought to already know we exist.
but they could travel back in time to exterminate us. duh!!
#5, De dee de
#8…. theme from Jaws? 🙂
This speaks volumes to me. We are such an incredibly small and insignificant nothing in the vastness of space.
So very small and our time here is so terribly limited and yet we fight and kill and go to war for oil or land.
Sometimes I wish I was on one of the Voyager crafts.
#1, my dearest julieb, they would laugh at us for using such inferior technology. though it is true that the animals with higher intelligence have better tasting meat, i think aliens with higher technology would have made it all to the level of vegetarian. 🙂
As memory serves, in Ron L. Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth, the Psyclos were alerted to earth’s presence because of that stupid gold disk on one of the Voyager probes…
my memory being what it is, I decided to go dig up the book (see below)
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And right in our own histories, you know how it says we got here?”
“Ump, ” said Char.
“Man apparently sent out some kind of probe that gave full directions to the place, had pictures of man on it and everything. It got picked up by a Psychlo recon. And you know what?”
“Ump, “ said Char.
“The probe and the pictures were on a metal that was rare everywhere and worth a clanking fortune. And Intergalactic paid the Psychlo governors sixty trillion Galactic credits for the directions and the concession. One gas barrage and we were in business. “
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Or it could drift forever and nothing ever comes of it.
#14,
Or it could get sucked into the intake of an alien space craft as if it were a spec of dust and turned into ionic plasma jet particle blasting stream.
Speaking of time travel, how did #14 travel through time to comment on her own post?
Ghotiy, isn’t it?