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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.'"
V'ger will fall into a black hole and comeback home in a few hundred years and then Kirk will save us all :D
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?
"Each record is encased in a protective aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and a needle. Instructions, in symbolic language, explain the origin of the spacecraft and indicate how the record is to be played."
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!
http://xkcd.org/701/
http://xkcd.com/539/
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
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.
It's not distance. It's time. You're thinking in hundreds or thousands of years, and that's simply absurd. After leaving the Solar System, these probes will be lost in an inconceivably large expanse of space. Voyager 1 is due a close approach to the red dwarf star AC+79 3888 in about 40,000 years - where 'close approach' means a distance of 1.6 light years. And that's mostly because that star's moving towards the Sun, rather than Voyager moving towards it. Voyager 2 has no such close encounter planned, though it will come within a few lightyears of Sirius in about 300,000 years.
For comparison: 40,000 years ago the last Neanderthals were wandering Spain. 300,000 years ago... well, there's evidence of the use of fire.
And that's the timescale for a close approach to a star of the order of a lightyear. To actually be found, unless someone out there has godlike sensor technology (in which case there's no point trying to hide anyway), they'd have to come a lot closer in than that. Millions of years? Billions? These probes are small, and in a few decades their transmitters will fall silent and their radioactive cores die and their metal structures cool to the ambient temperature of deep space. They'll be hard to spot.
Don't think of this as a message. Think of it as a time capsule. By the time they're found, if they ever are found, then whatever is living on Earth won't be H. sapiens any more. If there even is an Earth by then, or a Sun. The record doesn't say 'Here we are' - it says, 'Here we were'.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
As an added bonus, information regarding Paul's mortality can be found by playing the record in the opposite direction.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
N = 3, each of which lasted about 15 years. While that doesn't live up to our society's moral expectations, I doubt many people reading this will manage even *one* 15-year marriage.