Messages for the future: The time capsule made for aliens

We live in a small planet called the Earth that orbitates a medium sized star named the Sun in a galaxy known as the Milky Way. Compared to our galaxy and the entire universe we are tiny, but that doesn’t mean we’re not special. Here on Earth we have created and found a lot of amazing things that are definitely worth seeing. This why four decades ago NASA decided to build our own "time capsule" and launch it to the cosmic ocean in order to prove our existence and our discoveries to whoever finds it out there.

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In 1977 two probes called Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched into space with the mission of studying the Solar System, originally they were only meant to study Jupiter and Saturn, but the mission has been extended 3 times already. Both probes are currently exploring the outer boundaries of the interstellar space (Voyager 1) and heliosphere (Voyager 2). Technically, the Voyager 1 is still inside our Solar System but it did left our “planetary neighbourhood”.

Voyager 1 (left) and Voyager 2 (right)

But NASA didn’t want the probes to only explore the solar system, they wanted them to have a small gift with a message intended for any extraterrestrial life. This why they created the Golden Records.

The Golden Records

They are two gold-plated copper LPs that carry greetings, sounds and music from our planet. The famous astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan was the one responsible of the committee that chose the content of the records for NASA. Like I said before, they are considered a ‘time capsule’ and it is very unlikely they find any intelligent life, in fact, intelligent life will have to find the Voyager.

“The record will be played only if there are any advanced civilizations traveling through interstellar space” - Carl Sagan

On the cover they have instructions written in a symbolic language that explain how the record has to be played and also the origin of the spacecraft.

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These records represent the whole humanity, they are the evidence of our existence, our sounds, our music, our thoughts and our science.

Content

Note: I do NOT own any of the videos and photographs bellow. All the credit goes to their authors.

As I previously mentioned, a committee led by Carl Sagan took the job of selecting the content. They selected 115 images in total, and they added several natural and human sounds like the sound of wind, thunder, whales, birds, footsteps, laughter and others.

This video contains the natural sounds included in the record. Warning: the first one is scary.

The images (encoded in analog form) are included in black and white and also in color. First, they are about scientific interest, showing the Solar System, physical and mathematical equations and quantities, reproduction, DNA, and the human anatomy.

Jupiter	Solar System Location	Solar System Parameters

The images show life on Earth from several cultures, including architecture, technological advances, means of transportation, food, portraits of people, as well as regular activities, such as eating and running.

Humans feeding	Cars in a highway	Woman in a supermarket

It does not only contain photographs of humanity, but also about plants, insects, animals, and landscapes. Some images have time, size, mass and chemical indications, with the measures explained in the diagrams of the first images.

On the other hand, the committee also decided to add a varied selection of music. It features artists like Beethoven, Mozart, Stravinsky, Glen Cloud, and others. It also has music from different cultures, such as Azerbaijani folk, Australia’s aborigine songs, etc.

On this link you can read on the official NASA website the complete list of songs.

They additionally added greetings in 55 modern and ancient languages, a message from the former UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, and the latin inspirational phrase “Per aspera ad astra” in morse code, which means: “Through difficulties to the stars”.

Message from the UN Secretary General at the beginning of the record

Fun fact: NASA has a lot of resources on their website to not only know more about the mission but actually see it. Here I leave you some of the links:

See the live mission status
Eyes on Voyager (using their app called NASA’s eyes you can see the Voyager in real time at any time of the mission)
Fast facts

Pale Blue Dot: Photograph taken by the Voyager 1 in 1990. That blue-ish dot is Earth from a distance of 6 billion kilometers

Personal opinion

To me it is absolutely fascinating and intriguing to know that there are two human-made objects out there in space traveling places where no man has been before and they are still sending important data to our planet. Also the fact that they carry our world’s history inside them is something everybody should know because those records represent us and maybe we think this doesn’t mean anything right now but I’m sure in the future it will.

Thank you so much for reading my post. I love space related topics so feel free to leave a comment if you enjoy them too!

References: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5