We told you about time capsules on page 331. When you see Star Wars or Star Trek you probably think space travel is way off in the future. You’re wrong—we’re already out there. Here’s some information about our time capsule in outer space.
The Voyager mission continues. Launched in 1977, the twin Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft will soon leave our solar system and become emissaries from Earth. NASA placed a message aboard Voyagers 1 and 2, a 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. A committee led by Dr. Carl Sagan of Cornell University assembled:
• 115 images
• A variety of natural sounds
• Musical selections from different cultures and eras
• Spoken greetings from Earth-people in 55 languages—beginning with Akkadian, spoken in Sumer about 6,000 years ago, and ending with Wu, a modern Chinese dialect.
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 images are encoded in analog form. The remainder of the record is in audio, designed to be played at 16⅔ revolutions per minute.
Here’s a list of the contents of the record:
Hibernating, a woodchuck breathes 10 times/hr; awake, 2,100 times/hr.
• Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no. 2 in F, first movement
• Bach’s “Gavotte en rondeaux” from the Partita no. 3 in E-major
• Mozart’s The Magic Flute, “Queen of the Night” aria, no. 14
• Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, “Sacrificial Dance”
• Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, prelude and fugue in C
• Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, first movement
• Beethoven’s String Quartet no. 13 in B-flat, Opus 130, Cavatina
• Holborne, Paueans, Galliards, Almains and Other Short Aeirs, “The Fairie Round” (Ireland)
• Court gamelan (Java)
• Percussion (Senegal)
• Pygmy girls’ initiation song (Zaire)
• Aboriginal songs, “Morning Star” & “Devil Bird” (Australia)
• “El Cascabel” (Mexico)
• “Johnny B. Goode” (USA)
• “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong (USA)
• “Dark Was the Night,” by Blind Willie Johnson (USA)
• Panpipes and drum (Peru)
• Men’s house song (New Guinea)
• “Tchakrulo” (Georgia S.S.R.)
• “Flowing Streams” (China)
• “Tsuru No Sugomori” (Japan)
• “Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin” (Bulgaria)
• Panpipes (Solomon Islands)
• Night Chant (Navajo)
• Wedding song (Peru)
• Raga: “Jaat Kahan Ho” (India)
• Bagpipes (Azerbaijan)
What’s the slang term for an emergency room patient who isn’t sick enough to for an emergency room patient
Hyena Elephant Wild dog Tame dog The first tools Footsteps Heartbeats Laughter Fire Speech |
Volcanoes Earthquake Thunder Mud pots Wind Rain Surf Crickets Birds Blacksmith |
Mother and child Herding sheep Sawing Tractor Riveter Morse code Ships Horse and cart |
Train Bus Auto F-111 flyby Frogs Saturn 5 lift-off Kiss Life signs Pulsar |
Speakers were given no instructions on what to say other than that it was to be a greeting to possible extraterrestrials and that it must be brief. Here’s a sample:
• “Greetings to our friends in the stars. We wish that we will meet you someday.”
—Arabic
• “Hello to everyone. We are happy here and you be happy there.”
—Rajasthani (Northwest India)
• “Hello from the children of planet Earth.”
—English
• “Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time.”
—Amoy (Eastern China)
Here are some (not all) of the languages in which they spoke: Sumerian, Urdu, Italian, Ila, Romanian, Hindi, Nguni, Hittite, French, Vietnamese, Sotho, Swedish, Hebrew, Burmese, Amoy, Sinhalese, Akkadian, Ukrainian, Aramaic, Spanish, Greek, Korean, Wu, Persian, Indonesian, Latin, Armenian, Serbian, Portuguese, Kechua, Polish
It will be forty thousand years before the Voyagers make a close approach to any other planetary system.
The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.
—Carl Sagan