NASA’s mixtape for aliens

I am kind of a science geek, but really this is about being a socio­logy geek.

In 1977, NASA launched two “intre­pid” Voya­ger spa­cec­rafts. Their pri­mary pur­pose was to pho­to­graph dis­tant pla­nets from ran­ges never before achie­ved. It suc­cee­ded beau­ti­fully, but of more inte­rest to me is the secon­dary pur­pose of this mission.

After pas­sing Pluto (or Nep­tune?), what’s left to do with the most dis­tant object we’ve sent into space? Obviously, pro­pel it to a speed of one million miles per day and hope it reaches some alien society. But what do you send to an alien society?

Why, “Johnny B. Goode” of course!

NASA inc­lu­ded a “Gol­den Record” aboard the Voya­gers, com­plete with sty­lus, con­tai­ning music, ima­ges, and per­so­nal gree­tings. These con­tents are addi­tio­nally valua­ble to us as they force us to con­si­der and appre­ciate the most uni­ver­sal of human mores, as demons­tra­ted by some of my favo­rite images:

The choi­ces of what to inc­lude range from the super-technical to the super-banal, but ordi­na­rily incons­pi­cuous details like our base-ten coun­ting sys­tem become so genui­nely and overwhel­mingly pro­found in this con­text. Not to men­tion the enthu­siasm and opti­mism requi­red to inc­lude such inde­ciphe­ra­ble speech as “Hello from the chil­dren of pla­net Earth.”

Extra dou­ble spe­cial thanks to the WFMU blog for indi­rectly lea­ding me toward this site.