Farthest Human-Made Object: First Quarter Century
An anonymous reader writes "The NASA Astrobiology Magazine reports today the 25th anniversary of the Voyager I launch, now the farthest human-made object at 93 Sun-Earth distances (93 AU), or 12 light-hours away. Expected battery life to 2020. The fascinating part is that gold record of civilization, which is a strange audio mix of sentimental kisses [wav file, let ET phone home that way] and perhaps the most dated picture of DNA. Some progress there. Voy 1 will likely confuse even modern earthlings-- much less ET. Case in point: In 2002, can we understand that 70's show, when the Polish greeting memorialized as "Welcome, creatures from beyond the outer world"? Unlike those ET creatures we meet daily from the inner world?"
Not any more odd perhaps than the "voice of the leader of earth" being a more-or-less powerless figurehead of a more-or-less powerless political entity.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.