about the record: “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…. 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….Once the Voyager spacecraft leave the solar system (by 1990, both will be beyond the orbit of Pluto), they will find themselves in empty space. It will be forty thousand years before they make a close approach to any other planetary system.”
how to use: “Instructions, in symbolic language, explain the origin of the spacecraft and indicate how the record is to be played.”
complicated explanation for complicated symbols…
June 5th, 2008 at 10:10 am
i definitely understand why they added a wide musical selection (music is universal???) but i am a bit confused on the greetings in 55 languages??? if i had no knowledge of language from earth-people, i would just assume that the combined greetings represented one language…no? -i’m horrible at conveying anything that makes sense.