A landmark in human literature

Not so much a book or a literary work of art, but rather a gold-plated phonograph record in an aluminum case containing the life story of our species and launched toward the stars. Included on the record are greetings in over 50 languages, various animal noises including the songs of the humpback whales, music from different cultures, as well as an audio representation of the electrical activity of one person's body over the course of an hour.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Interstellar_Record


The recording should last for one billion years...or until a meteorite hits it, whichever occurs the earliest.

A cartridge and stylus are included on board for playing back the record. That's the funny part. If any species, human or extraterrestrial, should find these records, I doubt very much they will be primitive enough to figure that out. Maybe, maybe not...

If they can find it, they can figure it out. Just think of all the times the folks on Star Trek found old fashioned items in space. All they had to do was look in their vast database of stuff and there were the operating instructions.



Malcolm

How interesting. I only read the first part of the article, but am impressed by all the record holds. Isn't it fascinating to see that there is always hope of another race or species of intelligence 'out there' somewhere?

Couldn't they afford to just send an iPod?

Is the record called "Terra's Golden Hits"?

Quote :

Isn't it fascinating to see that there is always hope of another race or species of intelligence 'out there' somewhere?

It's not been publicized, but a message was received from a race that got the gold record. It reads, "Enjoyed the menu. We're on our way."

Lin,
Had the record been compiled now, Britney Spears and the Spice Girls greatest hits would have been on there for sure.

Isn't it amazing how a lot of groundbreaking things were done so early on, like the moon landings way back in the 60s and first messages to the stars were sent in the 70s. In that age, a desktop computer would have occupied an entire room and sending video from your (then uninvented) mobile phone was a figment of someone's imagine who'd had a little too much to drink.

So now with all this advanced technology at our disposal today it seems like we haven't lived up to such dreams.

Malcolm and Zada,
As for inviting the aliens to come to us, we've even "flashed" them using the world's largest radio telescope:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message

Worse still, we've told them what our biological make up is, how our DNA and genetic coding is assembled and even the fact that we occupy the third rock from the Sun and the position of the Solar System relative to the rest of our Milky Way galaxy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque

They know exactly where to find us...and what our weak spots are... Isn't that a little spooky, eh?

A Ahad wrote:

Malcolm and Zada,
As for inviting the aliens to come to us, we've even "flashed" them using the world's largest radio telescope:

The mind boggles ... "Goerge Clooney found a rocking chair with a vibrating dildo in the middle" did they flash this or was it the real thing?

I certainly hope it wasn't the real thing. But then I'm a man.

Gets worse... the search for extraterrestrial intelligenece - SETI - could be moving from "listening" (picking up radio signals) to "seeing" (visually detecting optical laser signals coming from the stars).

"While most SETI sky searches have studied the radio spectrum, some SETI researchers have considered the possibility that alien civilizations might be using powerful lasers for interstellar communications at optical wavelengths. The idea was first suggested in a paper published in the British journal Nature in 1961, and in 1983 Charles Townes one of the inventors of the laser, published a detailed study of the idea in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Most SETI researchers agreed with the idea."

Means if we choose to flash at them again... then this time round we'd be aiming a flashlight and shining it right into the eyes of the aliens. Picture that...