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KF5JRV > TECH 24.09.16 12:35l 43 Lines 2584 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 2432_KF5JRV
Read: GUEST
Subj: Voyager Gold Record
Path: IW8PGT<CX2SA<N0KFQ<KF5JRV
Sent: 160924/1115Z 2432@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA BPQK1.4.65
Launching "Messages in a Bottle" into the Cosmic Ocean
The Voyager Golden Records were included on the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft
launched in on September 5, 1977 and August 20, 1977 respectively as a kind of
time capsule intended to communicate a story of our world to
extraterrestrials. Each was a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk-shaped
phonograph record 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.
Sagan and associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds,
such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other
animals. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and
eras, and spoken greetings from in fifty-five languages, and printed messages
from President Jimmy Carter and U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim.
Because it was believed that the Voyager spacecrafts would not encounter
another solar system for 40,000 years, the production of these records seems
to have involved a naive faith in the permanence of accessibility of analog
data, and in the durability of such data to survive over extremely long
periods of time.
"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 115 images
are encoded in analog form. The remainder of the record is in audio, designed
to be played at 16-2/3 revolutions per minute. It contains the spoken
greetings, beginning with Akkadian, which was spoken in Sumer about six
thousand years ago, and ending with Wu, a modern Chinese dialect. Following
the section on the sounds of Earth, there is an eclectic 90-minute selection
of music, including both Eastern and Western classics and a variety of ethnic
music. 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. As Carl Sagan has noted, 'The spacecraft will be encountered
and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in
interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean
says something very hopeful about life on this planet'
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html.
73 Scott kf5jrv
KF5JRV @ KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA
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