By: Hannah Gliedman

What is the Golden Record?

In 1977 spacecrafts Voyager 1 and 2 were launched into space. Their goal was to take pictures of Jupiter. Because this was going to be the first man-made thing to reach interstellar space the NASA team decided to put aboard a record that would encapsulate all human existence in 90 minutes. The record would be used to communicate with other life forms about planet earth. It showed images from our universe, our home, us and just about everything on earth. It played sounds from every generation from all around the world. This record is a symbol of the human condition, and it’s called the Golden Record.

Creation of the record?

NASA enlisted Carl Sagan, a committee chair, and his team, to create the record. They wanted to put aboard an object that, if found, would signal to the finder where it came from. A main problem the team had when creating the record was fitting the entire history of earth into a 30 minute frame, because at the time records could only hold about 30 minutes of playtime. The team at NASA figured out how to maximize the speed and get the playtime up to 90. Now all they had to do was figure out what they wanted to fill it with.

How it works

Because there is a very slim to none chance that beings that evolved completely separate from us would understand our language, NASA scientists had to create a way for aliens to understand. They used the most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen, this diagram shows hydrogen particles transitioning through parallel and antiparallel spins. When this happens electromagnetic radiation is released with a period of about .7 nanoseconds and a wavelength of 21 cm, so they hope that aliens will associate that tick with those measurements.

What’s on the record?

The record starts with sounds from planet earth telling the story of earth through sound: volcanos, thunder, crickets, birds, fire, laughter, Morse code, airplanes, a baby crying, and greetings from 55 different languages, and music from all sides of the globe.

The chances of an extraterrestrial being finding the spacecraft before its inevitable decay in a billion years is slim. The chances of it decoding it and sending a message back is even smaller, because by the time we receive their message humans will cease to exist, but that’s not the point. Yes, it would be cool to have communication with other living creatures in the universe, but that’s not the point. The point of the record is to have something, anything out in the universe that shows that we were here, so that when the sun expands and humans and earth are destroyed there is something out there to prove to someone that humans existed.