So here’s your task: you can put 115 images on a spacecraft that, in sum, will acquaint any aliens who see them with the nature of our world and our solar system. How can you possibly do that? There’s so much to tell about: our different cultures, our music, our architecture, our food, our bodies, our science, our technology—and you get just 115 images to convey the whole lot.
Well, that would be enormously fun, I think, and in fact somebody did it. Under the aegis of NASA, a group of people put together those images on the so-called “Golden Record” put aboard the Voyager Spacecraft (there were two, both launched in 1977), in the hope that perhaps someday, after our Earth may be long gone, an advanced civilization could learn about that one brief shining moment known as “life on Earth.”
I find the images incredibly poignant; all 115 are reproduced on imgur, and I’ll put some below. Besides the scenes, there are also greetings, music, and sounds from Earth, which you might peruse on their respective pages. But first a bit about the “Golden Record” from the NASA Voyager site:
Pioneers 10 and 11, which preceded Voyager, both carried small metal plaques identifying their time and place of origin for the benefit of any other spacefarers that might find them in the distant future. 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, et. al. 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 from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages, and printed messages 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.
How fun! Imagine the arguments they had about how to best convey our species and what we know.
First, here’s the letter from Jimmy Carter explaining the record:
And here’s a photo of the Golden Record; the disk itself is engraved with information about Earth:
Finally, some images from imgur, which has them all. It was hard for me to choose even a small sample, so you should go over and see them all.
And my favorite! I believe the extended fingers are part of a Chinese drinking game, but I’m not sure. Imagine aliens puzzling over this one:
Here’s how you can get them (if you can get them):
The definitive work about the Voyager record is “Murmurs of Earth” by Executive Director, Carl Sagan, Technical Director, Frank Drake, Creative Director, Ann Druyan, Producer, Timothy Ferris, Designer, Jon Lomberg, and Greetings Organizer, Linda Salzman. Basically, this book is the story behind the creation of the record, and includes a full list of everything on the record. “Murmurs of Earth”, originally published in 1978, was reissued in 1992 by Warner News Media with a CD-ROM that replicates the Voyager record. Unfortunately, this book is now out of print, but it is worth the effort to try and find a used copy or browse through a library copy.
Finally, after Matthew (who sent me the imgur link) saw this post, he sent me this email:
The photos are both brilliant and bizarre. Just as well nothing will ever read them – what would they make of them? There’s an SF story there.
Indeed! What a great premise! Some alien civilization receives the Golden Record, tries to interpret it, and gets everything wrong! What do they make of Beethoven, or the communal Chinese dinner? Lots of room for laughs.
h/t: Matthew Cobb
EDIT by Matthew Cobb – In the first Star Trek film from 1979, the alien space craft is in fact a souped-up version of Voyager, which ‘went through a black hole and ended up on the other side of the galaxy’ where it was encountered by a machine race which gave it the ability to fulfill its destiny (or some such rubbish). Here’s a clip:
The picture above the half muscle, half skeleton human looks like a bunch of owls.
All cats, our masters. 🙂
OK …. what would people today, 40 odd years after the launch of the Voyagers, chose?
Apart from cats, that is ….
MOAR CATS!
Totes amazeballs!
We need to be sending out images of the Death Star so they’ll leave us the hell alone.
Or just to mess with them.
I always thought it was a bummer that no Beatles songs made it on the record. Oh the humanity!
I agree; that was the first thing I looked for on the music list. How could they leave out that music?
Yeah but someone did suggest the image of The Beatles as a possible flag for Canada in 1965. See number 4 in the link.
I’d take that over a maple leaf or a star-spangled banner. lol!
The assumption that classical music is the apex of human musical achievement is one of my personal bugbears(although I think they might’ve included Chuck Berry and a few others on the record as well).
I’d love to know that the Beatles were in there, and something off the white album too. In reality they’d probably have chosen Yellow Submarine though. Next time they’ll surely ask me to help.
Sorry, Saul, but they should have asked me about which Beatles song to include on the disc. Wandering OT, but here it is.
‘It’s all too much’ by Harrison. Fanfare Hammond organ intro, ear-splitting guitar feedback, right-wall red random bass volume, percussion-as-instrument-rather-than-beat, sinewy nursery rhyme verse melody, massive chorus, ironic lyric ridiculous and sublime juxtaposed, rackety deconstruction.
Easily one of their top ten and criminally under-rated, even by the Fabs themselves. Not on the greatest compilations, not even mentioned in Scorsese’s overlong film biography of George. Recorded in May ’67, at the height of psychedelia and, bewilderingly, not released until January ’69.
Like the uninvited guest arriving at the fag-end of the party, still up for it when everyone else has staggered upstairs, too wasted and addled to recognize the pearl in their presents.
The world owes George. x
Embarrassingly I don’t actually remember ‘It’s All Too Much’…I’ll definitely look it up.
If it’s George songs then I’d go for Long, Long, Long, which is the most beautiful, hushed thing he ever wrote, or his psych highpoint Blue Jay Way, which no-one else seems to like.
Overall Beatles songs…I’d stick in Julia, Lennon’s most exquisite, subtle and haunting piece of songwriting. How could anything that heard Julia not want to learn more about the species that created it?
It’s more than a bit depressing that our first message to another civilization should be so encumbered by legalistic bullshit for people here in our own. Perhaps what we really should have sent was a DMCA-inspired EULA written by Disney lawyers….
b&
That would keep aliens well away from earth: “Well, Kodos, no point in invading there; they’re already enslaved by tyrannical overlords…”
The Saturn solar eclipse with the tiny blue dot earth in the corona,as presented by Carolyn Porco. Never fails to bring tears to my eyes. x
Long before they find Voyager they’d have intercepted out TV signals and concluded there’s no intelligent life on Earth.
First contact will be like in [b]Explorers[/b]: alien kids who have seen how we treated Klaatu in endless reruns of [b]The Day the Earth Stood Stll[/b] and who chose to avoid contact with Earth authorities entirely.
“Gnukra, this planet is of no interest to our race. Look at their tel-e-visual culture…garbage, garbage, gar…wait – who is that?”
“Her name is Snoo-kie. She is ruler of Jer-sey Beach.”
“Prepare for sexual invasion”.
Just looking at that set of photos and *I’m* confused. Many of them seem just too random to parse utterly without context, as an alien species would have to do.
The BBC did a radio play about putting the music for the Golden Record together. It was a few months ago so it has disappeared from iPlayer, but if you can somehow get hold of it, it is worth a listen
Yes, it’s a drinking game. The loser has to drink.
Not to be negative, but perhaps there ought to be recognition of our mistakes, wars, torture, religion, lacks in education…… a long, long (pictorial??)list, with a diagonal red line across.
“Do you think our ancestors were ever that full of themselves?”
That’s more or less the premise of the first Star Trek movie.
There’s a Star Trek: Voyager episode too where they find something sent from Earth, but not this one. It has nuclear power on it, and the civilization uses it as an instruction manual, and their planet is destroyed. Last season I think.
See Edit above, included more or less simultaneously with your comment.
I suppose for completeness (or complete nerdiness) we should note that ST:TMP was itself a retread of an original series episode called “The Changeling” in which a derelict Earth-launched space probe called NOMAD was salvaged and repurposed by intelligent aliens. This original episode predated Voyager by a decade.
Yes, thank you!
I distinctly remember my reaction at the time I saw it was, “Wait, haven’t I seen this already in an older episode?!” and being a touch offended that the filmmakers didn’t seem to care if long-time Blish/Roddenberry Star Trek fans might cringe at having the same O.Henry-style trick ending foisted on them twice.
(I was also as a teenager decidedly a hard SF fan, scorning the Bradbury-esque kicking of beer cans into the canals of Mars for the more scientifically plausible Asimov/Niven/Clarke school of the genre. This storyline always seemed a bit, er, unimaginatively anthropocentric to match the boldly going where no man has gone before promise…)
I kept thinking of V’ger as well.
I could see some advanced civilization discovering this thing a few billion years later. The alien would say, oh, what bad luck, the sun of that solar system blew out only 500 million years ago. Or was that an old episode of Twilight Zone.
Reminds me of Milliways …..
Good thing this happened when it did – I fully expect that Jimmy Carter grasped the project completely. I can’t imagine the same with Reagan (and meanwhile Nancy would have gone running for her astrologer).
my favorite image is the bite of the sandwich and licking ice cream. Totally human. 🙂
What’s totally bizarre in that picture is the way the guy who looks like Rush Limbaugh is eating his grilled cheese sandwich. He takes a big chomp on one side, and then turns it completely around for his second bite.
What Earthling does that? I say this unmasks an alien posing as human. So, no, I can’t agree with the “totally human” assessment.
It’s a conspiracy! They’re already here! 🙂
I am quite cynical that ‘mass’ messages will ever play an important role in communicated to ETI.
I put money on resonant neutrino beams and detectors (Nobel prize if you figure out how that works); then you might find ‘they’ have been trying to talk to us for long while.
As a point in reference, about 10^19 neutrinos pass through each of our bodies every second and can travel through nearly anything…for a long time and a long way.
Many people also forget that the TV signals not only get attenuated with distance, they’re a very dim signal next to an incredibly bright one. By now, if there was a civilization within reach of broadcast communications, we’d have gotten the return call. Anybody farther out…well, the station’s just too far distant to be heard against the static, no matter what sorts of fancy technology you might want to bring to bear. Claude Shannon strikes again….
b&
Wasn’t there a ruckus re. the images of the man and woman being sexist? Something about the woman being portrayed as submissive and the man as dominant.
I don’t know what the controvesy was at the time, but the only objection I might have looking at the images is that it’s the man raising his hand in greeting – as though he’s speaking for them both.
At least, that’s what it looks like to me; but I imagine aliens would have a hard time making any sense at all of this very human-specific gesture.
I think that’s exactly what the objection boiled down to.
Wait. It’s the woman waving…I don’t get it. It was something like that anyway. I think it formed part of the accusations that Sagan was a misogynist.
Looking at the photos, I see that there are far more photos of men being active: working (especially in groups), handling sharp tools, and travelling and being in motion. The images of women depict a far more passive lifestyle.
🐾
I’m irresistibly reminded of the great Arthur Clarke short story ‘History Lesson’, with its typically ironic twist in the tail.
The full story can be found here: http://hermiene.net/short-stories/history_lesson.html
The ending (SPOILER ALERT!!):
“Once more the final picture flashed on the screen, motionless this time, for the projector had been stopped. With something like awe, the scientists gazed at the still figure from the past, while in turn the little biped stared back at them with its characteristic expression of arrogant bad temper.
For the rest of time it would symbolize the human race. The psychologists of Venus would analyze its actions and watch its every movement until they could reconstruct its mind. Thousands of books would be written about it. Intricate philosophies would be contrived to account for its behavior.
But all this labor, all this research, would be utterly in vain. Perhaps the proud and lonely figure on the screen was smiling sardonically at the scientists who were starting on their age-long fruitless quest.
Its secret would be safe as long as the universe endured, for no one now would ever read the lost language of Earth. Millions of times in the ages to come those last few words would flash across the screen, and none could ever guess their meaning:
A Walt Disney Production.”
One thing I’m thinking looking at these photos – if an alien race sent us their photos, what effect would they – the photos they considered inspiring, homey, heartwarming – have on me?
I think they’d creep me the fuck out. I have to suspect that’s probably the effect our photos would have on them.
Who spotted the sprinter Valeriy Borzov winning the 200m in 1972?
…winning the heats!
“or some such rubbish” – 🙂
http://webodysseum.com/art/116-images-of-the-voyager-golden-record/
That has all of the images (no idea what they’re allowed to do with copyright).
The drinking-game one makes more sense in the context of the pictures around it. I love how they explain things from scratch – counting a few objects into mathematics, creating scales, showing how DNA works from a couple of atomic diagrams of electron orbits.
I want to know more about the Trans Antarctic Expedition vehicle!
This is Sno-Cat “Rock ‘n’ Roll” : http://goo.gl/moL7L7 As of August 2014, it was being restored by the Tucker Sno-Cat Corp. in Oregon.
Sno-Cat “County of Kent” was fatally unlucky : http://goo.gl/XIE4Tu
There’s a poor-quality video of the expedition on YouTube : http://youtu.be/wQ-HmwXBF84
/@
One of those shots (the African hunters) is also in _Life on Earth_, I think is, by David Attenborough.
There is also another SF story about some ETs finding the golden record: 1984’s _Starman_, with Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen.