Thanks to my pals at Radio Lab1 I found out a great deal more about Voyager. Yeah, that Voyager. And it involves Carl Sagan. Between my limited knowledge and experience, I hadn’t heard about this before Radio Lab introduced it to me.
So it’s 1977, Ann Druyan and Carl Sagan, put together a compilation of all the world’s media, a basic view of humanity to be launched into space. The idea began with Pioneer 10 and 11, “destined to be the first man made object to escape from the solar system into interstellar space,” which carried small plaques to show scientifically educated inhabitants of some other star system, who might intercept it millions of years from now, when Pioneer was launched, from where, and by what kind of beings.“2 Whoa. Right? So they were so inspired by this idea that they wanted to do something on a larger scale.
The plan was to include gold records on two probes sent into interstellar space. Using gold the records will last for a very long time. Longer than life will exist on Earth. A really long time. The records were coated in Uranium something, which “has a half-life of 4.51 billion years.“3 THAT long. (Plus, gold records look really bad-ass.) The idea was to send a message with these probes, a short description of where they originated. Unlike the plaques on Pioneer 10 and 11, the gold records would include sound. The contents of the records are well documented elsewhere, if you want to read more about it. NASA also has a sample of the recordings and images.
Where is Voyager now? About here. Somewhere in open space. WHAT? The furthest humanmade object away from Earth? Whoa, this is seriously beyond my mind’s capacity.
Voyager 1 is now at the outer edge of our solar system, in an area called the heliosheath, the zone where the sun’s influence wanes. This region is the outer layer of the ‘bubble’ surrounding the sun, and no one knows how big this bubble actually is. Voyager 1 is literally venturing into the great unknown and is approaching interstellar space. Traveling at a speed of about one million miles per day, Voyager 1 could cross into interstellar space within the next 10 years.
“Interstellar space is filled with material ejected by explosions of nearby stars,” Stone said. “Voyager 1 will be the first human-made object to cross into it.“4
It’s been about 2 weeks since I originally heard about this, and I can’t decide what to think about it. I’m blown away that an object we made is that far into the unknown. I keep tripping on the idea of an eternal time capsule (not really eternal, but come on! It’s close enough.) AND the distant, unlikely event of someone ever finding and playing the record! All that traveling through space and time to arrive where?!
So what I’m getting at, what would you choose to be a semi-eternal representation of yourself or humanity? And, I know, this is sort of a hypothetical question, but it is still important.
1The original Radio Lab show:
2 http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000–001623.html
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record
4 http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/
my father sees this as a monumental waste of money. i love it for providing possible key plot points for not one, but two Star Trek movies.
This was also the episode that made me fall in love with radiolab — i feel very cheesy about that.
it really didn’t dawn on me about the immense cost. i guess you can really say that about the whole space program in a way.
the other side of it though is that we are investing in something that will last much longer than we will, which seems like a pretty good thing to spend money on.
I wasn’t gonna root for you in UB3, but since the Voyager Record is my most favorite inanimate object in the universe, I can feel the scales starting to tip..
This is the one of the most beautiful things I’ve learned about in a lllloooooooooong time. I’m am so touched by the idea behind it, the music included, and the people — sagan and druyan — who were in charge of it. I’m on a mad hunt for a copy!