Our Message to the Stars-The Voyager Golden Record

NASA introduced two spacecraft voyagers 1 and 2 on a planetary Grand Tour during the summer of 1977. however it was not the original concept they simply wanted to go to Jupiter and Saturn to research those planets their moons and their surroundings in instead their Mission evolved to include studying Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune as well as everything in between they didn't understand the bigger goal could be accomplished by remotely controlling the onboard computers until after the mission had already started as a result a mission extension was authorized to cover the outermost regions of the Solar System's surface we bring to you the Voyager golden record Humanity's message to the Stars astronomers had also noticed that the arrangement of the planets in our solar system was getting close to being perfect which would enable the utilization of gravitational help by the spaceship a planetary slingshot that enables spacecraft to pick up some of the planet's orbital speed as they pass it approximately once every 175 years this kind of alignment was vital to the Voyager missions it implies that they could travel farther and faster while using less fuel which would free up space for additional instruments the two Voyager spacecraft are currently the most distant structures that humans have ever created both spacecraft left the solar system during the first decade of the 21st century moving millions of kilometers daily the planets aligned even though the Stars didn't and while they were traveling they transmitted back some of the most amazing images of our planetary companions these include the well-known pale blue dot photograph in which the Earth is barely visible as a pixel against the sun's brightness it is simply amazing to think that these photographs which were the first of their sort were captured using camera technology from the 1970s the biggest computers in the world were similar to the kinds of stuff we have in our pockets today and I'm not talking about your phone I'm talking about your key fob according to Rich tarot a member of the image scientist team for the Voyager Mission at the time of course the Voyager provided us with more than just pictures they were both outfitted with tools for measuring cosmic ray plasma wave and other types of data the Voyager spacecraft has continued to communicate with us more than 40 years after launch defying the original Mission time frame of only five years NASA still predicts that radio communication will end entirely by 2025 despite all of this the instruments won't be able to generate enough Heat by that point to protect themselves from the freezing extremes of space all the devices on board will gradually stop functioning all but one due to the Machinery being too cold and the signal being too faint the Pioneer program's Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 were launched in 1972 and 1973 respectively to conduct observations that would prepare the way for the Voyager missions although the Voyager missions were unique in their ambition and scope similar missions had been carried out in the past Carl Sagan Frank Drake and Linda Salzman were in charge of Designing the Pioneer plaques which were two gold anodized plaques that contained a few graphic drawings supposed to be read by a space-faring civilization during the final stages of planning for the Voyager missions they were approached once more with the possibility of sending more elaborate messages that would try to tell Humanity's story rather than just drawings phonograph records the most modern and Mission appropriate encoding technique at the moment that would weigh equally as much as the Pioneer plaques but has the capacity to include far more information were used to make this happen even though phonograph records were technologically sophisticated they could only play for about 30 minutes at a time making it nearly impossible to represent Humanity as with everything else in the space exploration industry limits had to be pushed and Creative Solutions had to be engineered they were able to extend the run time to 90 minutes by changing the disk's revolution rate after the hardware was figured out the team had to select what they wanted to put in writing for all we know our interplanetary Brethren and we do not have a Common Language or common Life Experiences given that the likelihood of this is extremely remote you have to wonder if this is actually a craft that might reach another Star a planet or an extraterrestrial despite the fact that this was the guiding principle for the initial creation of the messages on these plaques what we do share however are facts of reality physics chemistry and Mathematics do we really want to tell this to them is the fact that we can do math all they need to know about us the Voyager golden record Humanity's message to the stars and the goal of the NASA teams project which started with the production of Music language and images for humanities very own mixtape with the aim of capturing The Human Condition was to prove otherwise the crew worked tirelessly to ensure that the record's contents were as representative of Earth's population as possible although this was not always achievable when it came to listening to music outside of your own demographic in the 1970s you had two options either you owned cassette players or you listened to the song on the radio when you loved what you heard you had to go out and get the physical copy this is what the crew did for the golden record because there was no Spotify or Internet the composition's capacity to convey emotions made it exceptionally significant humans are feeling based creatures thus we are much more than just beings capable of perception and thought however communicating about our emotional lives can be more challenging especially with people who have quite different physiologies it appears that music at least made a sincere effort to express human feelings music by buck and Beethoven was particularly picked for the recording in order to illustrate the mathematical characteristics of Music a perhaps Universal phenomenon they made a valiant effort to represent the diversity of the world's music by including musicians from ancient China Bulgaria Azerbaijan Congo Peru and many more cultures the record also includes greetings from 55 other languages including the now famous line from Carl Sagan's own son Nick which you may have heard before goal is to chronologically portray the tale of our civilization only through sound the recordings also contained 115 analog images that were encoded some of the graphics are technical in nature and describe constants or show scale however many of them appear to be random images it's anyone's guess as to what they might imply and perhaps that is why they are significant the records varied material undoubtedly captured some of the most beautiful parts of life on Earth such as professions of love and amazing Symphonies but whether on purpose or not it also included some less attractive elements the option to send your song and immortalize it would seem to be the ultimate form of label promotion but that was far from the case in the meantime NASA refused to include photographs of explosions despite the fact that many people in war-torn Nations live with them out of concern that they would be seen as hostile and insulting a picture of a young couple which Carl and his colleagues felt would be non-offensive and depict a crucial component of human life reproduction was then presented to be included in order to avoid a backlash from the public NASA reportedly rejected that and chose the images silhouette instead although Anne and Carl's love tale is surely intriguing it is less well known that Carl was already married to Linda Salzman at the time while Anne was engaged to Tim Ferriss there is nothing in the record that specifically links these occurrences to the fact that some people found love during all of this While others lost it click on the Subscribe button if you are finding this video interesting however the fact that these items were so worldly in nature was still a part of the broader process that adds to the sincerity of the golden records like the records themselves these Tales are designed to endure for ages the electroplated aluminum cover that will preserve the gold-plated copper disk is expected to persist for at least the next billion years by that time the Sun will have enlarged to the point where its heat no longer sustains life on Earth but rather kills it it has an almost endless shelf life the faint Blue Dot will now be nothing more than a scorched Cinder yet a billion years are still merely a billion years because of the vastness of space it is unlikely that the Voyager spacecraft will encounter another planet in 10 to 20 years of course it may be discovered earlier by a technologically advanced being but even that possibility is extremely remote even when we are all gone Voyager signals will continue to be transmitted it took the development of new technologies to make the golden records a reality it was an accomplishment that required some of the world's brightest scientists and Engineers to help bring about and as the world advances and we continue to make progress we'll need an increasing number of individuals to assist in realizing our new ideas what then is the true purpose of the golden records how does the Voyager golden record contribute to our understanding of the universe and our place in it want to know more about the fascinating history of space travel from Sputnik to SpaceX watch this video popping on the screen right now to learn more

Channel: HORIZONSPACE

Views: 40

Keywords: Outer space, the planets, the solar sysyem, the universe, documentary about space, The sun, the history of the universe, astronomy, nasa, the moon, science documentary, discovery, ridddle, space channel, space niche, galaxy, space, space videos

Id: uJkU_G_K2L0

Length: 10min 1sec (601 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2023