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Spaceship Earth's Message In A Bottle |
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Written by Staff
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Saturday, 12 November 2005 |
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 In civilizations quest to answer the eternal question, 'Are we alone in the universe?' Voyager 1 and 2 space probes were launched in 1977. Each probe has a copy of the same gold gramophone record, which is encoded with data from all aspects of life on Earth. Remember, this was before the era of compact discs.
Each record’s data includes the following and were collected by Carl Sagan and a hand-picked committee:
- 115 images including only one from Canada - the Toronto airport;
- sounds from nature and Earth including the sound of surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals;
- recorded greetings in 55 languages including the English "Hello from the children of planet Earth.," and the Min dialect of Amoy, "Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time."
- -a selection of music from around the world including "Johnny B. Goode," written and performed by Chuck Berry and "Melancholy Blues," performed by Louis Armstrong.
Each record is enclosed in a protective aluminum jacket together with a cartridge and a needle and instructions on how to play the records.
After the Voyager spacecraft had left our solar system over a decade ago, it faces forty thousand years-worth of empty space before it makes an approach to any other planetary system.
The space probe has currently traveled over thirteen billion miles, and is now hurtling through a region of asteroids and comets known as the Kuiper Belt. Its last radio contact, barely detectable given the probe’s diminishing power levels, was received on January 23, 2003.
Unless the probe is found by an alien race, it will continue to hurtle through the universe for infinity. Long after humanity on Earth is gone and the Earth itself vaporized by her dying sun millions of years hence, the little blue planet's message-in-a-bottle will continue on its journey of discovery.
We can only hope that one day someone will finally find our message of hope and perhaps assure yet another civilization that they too were not alone... Information included in the space probes: Images Sounds in .wav format Languages in .ra format Music |
