Two golden phonograph records that were originally placed in a time capsule and launched into space aboard Voyager 1 and Voyager II in 1977 have now been made available by NASA for the public on SoundCloud.
Assigned and loaded with each Voyager probe, the pair of records (titled "Sounds of Earth") have identical track lists, 19 in total. Titles include fare such as "Life Signs, Pulsar," "Kiss, Mother and Child," "Herding Sheep, Blacksmith, Sawing," "Mud Pots" (?) and other ordinary, everyday soundbytes — ordinary to humans, that is.
The strange origin story of these blinged-up vinyls? The golden records were made in case either of the Voyager craft had a run-in with an extraterrestrial life-form of the UFO-riding variety; in this proposed scenario, the recordings would serve as a type of greeting card. As President Jimmy Carter put it:
"This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours."
Hear out a few tracks from NASA's "Sounds of Earth" on SoundCloud. As far as we know, no alien ever listened to either of the golden records. Maybe they prefer Drake instead.
Photo: Ryan Somma | Flickr
Via: Popular Science
