The Ultimate Interstellar Valentine Mix Tape

Hugh Pickens writes "NPR reports that toward the end of the summer of 1977, NASA launched two Voyager spacecraft that each included a golden record containing, among other things, the sound of a kiss, a mother's first words to her newborn child, music from all over the world, and greetings in 59 different languages. The records on board were meant to survive for a billion years, in the hope that some day, against enormous odds, they might cross paths with an alien civilization. The record was a special project of Carl Sagan with the help of Ann Druyan, creative director of the project. For Druyan, though, the summer of 1977 and the Voyager project carry a deeply personal meaning because it was during the Voyager project that she and Sagan fell in love. Then Druyan had an idea for the record: They could measure the electrical impulses of a human brain and nervous system, turn it into sound, and put it on the record so that maybe, 1,000 million years from now, some alien civilization might be able to turn that data back into thoughts." (More, below.) "Just a few days after she and Sagan declared their love for each other, Druyan went to Bellevue Hospital in New York City and meditated while the sounds of her brain and body were recorded. According to Druyan, part of what she was thinking during that meditation was about 'the wonder of love, of being in love.' And the gold records? They're still out there with their offer, to whomever might stumble across them, of a human body newly in love. 'Whenever I'm down, ' says Druyan, 'I'm thinking: And still they move, 35,000 miles an hour, leaving our solar system for the great open sea of interstellar space.'"

Comments

did you not get the memo?

[ionix5891]

V'ger will fall into a black hole and comeback home in a few hundred years and then Kirk will save us all :D

Never mind

[Stumbles]

Its a clever mask sending you to a paywall.

Hello Earth

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi. I'm an alien.
I have found your golden record.
I'm thinking to share it with my race via an alien protocol similar to bit-torrent.
What's my legal status?

Re:Hello Earth

[PopeRatzo]

Hi. I'm an alien.
I have found your golden record.

So why didn't you send me the first Ramones album like I asked you to?

Re:Hello Earth

[jschen]

Hi. I'm an alien. I have found your golden record. I'm thinking to share it with my race via an alien protocol similar to bit-torrent. What's my legal status?

Given your location, definitely non-resident alien.

Watch out...

[MercBoy]

Don't these damn scientists watch TV? On a Doctor Who episode, a sample of blood was sent out on a probe, and the evil aliens used it to control everyone on Earth with that blood type. Now, with brain wave samples, they come back and turn us all into brain-sucking zombies just for their amusement. It will be the ULTIMATE zombie movie!

Re:Watch out...

[sznupi]

Actually, following that precedent, it would turn only people who are in love into brain-sucking zombies.

In other words, it won't do hardly anything.

two xkcd strips about valentines day

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

http://xkcd.org/701/

http://xkcd.com/539/

Re:Unlikely

[JeanBaptiste]

Right, kick ass. Well, don't want to sound like a dick or nothin', but, ah... it says on your chart that you're fucked up. Ah, you talk like a fag, and your shit's all retarded.

Mixed Tape

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some unpublished notes from Carl Sagan about this project. Here is one of them:

If you want to make the ultimate interstellar valentine mix tape from scratch, you must first create the universe.

Re:How will they play it?

[dr_dank]

As an added bonus, information regarding Paul's mortality can be found by playing the record in the opposite direction.