The Golden Record

There’s new interest in sending communications into space, the ultimate message in a bottle. And there’s history of previous attempts to tell the universe that we are here. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

Ambience: Voyager’s Golden Record, voice “My dear friends in outer space, as you probably know..”

Vakoch: We’ve sent incredibly rich messages into space, particularly on the Voyager spacecraft.

Doug Vakoch is president of METI International, which stands for Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Vakoch: So this is a spacecraft that NASA launched in 1977, and on two of these spacecraft, they included golden records. These were recordings that included on one side over a hundred images of our solar system of the sounds of earth: greetings, music and the natural sounds of our planet.

Ambience: Golden Record: animal sounds.

Vakoch: It’s no good to send a record into space, if you don’t explain how to play it, but again, the folks who designed the golden record thought of that. So there is a metal case that holds the recording and etched on to that case is an explanation for how to play it. You put a stylus on to the recording into the groove and the stylus is included with the spacecraft, and the description of even how rapidly to turn it using as the time unit the transition of hydrogen from one state to another.

METI is planning to send a new round of messages into space. We’ll hear about that in future programs. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. You can hear this and previous programs on our podcast.

The Golden Record

The sounds of earth onboard the Voyager spacecraft.

Air Date:09/05/2017

Scientist:

Transcript:

The Golden Record

There's new interest in sending communications into space, the ultimate message in a bottle. And there's history of previous attempts to tell the universe that we are here. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

Ambience: Voyager's Golden Record, voice "My dear friends in outer space, as you probably know.."

Vakoch: We've sent incredibly rich messages into space, particularly on the Voyager spacecraft.

Doug Vakoch is president of METI International, which stands for Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Vakoch: So this is a spacecraft that NASA launched in 1977, and on two of these spacecraft, they included golden records. These were recordings that included on one side over a hundred images of our solar system of the sounds of earth: greetings, music and the natural sounds of our planet.

Ambience: Golden Record: animal sounds.

Vakoch: It's no good to send a record into space, if you don't explain how to play it, but again, the folks who designed the golden record thought of that. So there is a metal case that holds the recording and etched on to that case is an explanation for how to play it. You put a stylus on to the recording into the groove and the stylus is included with the spacecraft, and the description of even how rapidly to turn it using as the time unit the transition of hydrogen from one state to another.

METI is planning to send a new round of messages into space. We'll hear about that in future programs. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. You can hear this and previous programs on our podcast.