Alien Lore Mo. 234 - The sounds and music we sent into deep space on the Voyager (1977)

By Jack Brummet, NASA and Alien Lore Editor

The picture on the left went into space with our early interstellar craft (The Pioneers). It explains where earth is, what homo sapiens sort of looked like naked (like Barbie and Ken), and other information, like a diagram indicating the location of our sun. 

Nasa's Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) worked on this "Interstellar Outreach Program" for many years. The gold-plated disk is from the two Voyager craft, launched after the Pioneer.  It is a bronze record containing sounds and images of life on earth. Each of the two Voyagers is equipped with a record player of sorts--with a cartridge, even--to play the disk, and recover the images. 

The two circles in the bottom right side of the record show the two lowest states of a hydrogen atom. The vertical lines on the circles show the spin moment of the electron and proton. And (is this cool, or what?) "the transition time from one state to the next provides the fundamental clock reference used in ALL the cover diagrams and the images to be decoded from binaries."  [Ed's note: Obviously, they're not expecting a dork like me to find the record laying around somewhere in the future].

Carl Sagan and a team of other folks designed and selected the Voyager's messages and data. The disk includes a greeting in 55 different languages, from Aramaic to Vietnamese. The record also includes a sampler of non-human Earth sounds such as wind, rain, surf, chimps, sheep, crickets, saws, and trains. It contains photos as well, and maps, diagrams of DNA, vertebrate anatomy charts, chemical and mathematical definitions, and other visual displays. The disk includes Beethoven, a Chuck Berry tune (Johnny B, Goode), Bach and Mozart, a Navajo chant, Indian Ragas, and a Louis Armstrong recording. There are 116 binary images on the record. 

No one know if the aliens who find this will be able to use it, or decode the information. Will they even have hands? Opposable thumbs? Will they even think in any path parallel to ours? Will the disk just look like gibberish to them? Their scientists--if they have science (and we assume they must)--may need to study the disk for a couple of thousand years before they make a breakthrough. 

A book titled Murmurs of the Earth, written by Sagan and colleagues, was reissued in 1992 with a CD-ROM compilation of the Golden Record, and a description of its creation. It's out of print, but you can pick up a copy fairly cheaply. 


Don't hold your breath that any of our cousins in other galaxies will find this and come to visit. The Voyager will not come close to another star for something like 40,000 years. But then again, when you're dealing with our alien cousins Out There, 40,000 years may just be a sneeze in the winds of time. 


Sounds included on the Voyager record:

• Music of The Spheres (WTF is this!?)
• Volcanoes, Earthquake, Thunder
• Mud Pots
• Wind, Rain, Surf
• Crickets, Frogs
• Birds, Hyena, Elephant
• Chimpanzee
• Wild Dog
• Footsteps, Heartbeat, Laughter
• Fire, Speech
• The First Tools
• Tame Dog
• Herding Sheep, Blacksmith, Sawing
• Tractor, Riveter
• Morse Code, Ships
• Horse and Cart
• Train
• Tractor, Bus, Auto
• F-111 Flyby, Saturn 5 Lift-off
• Kiss, Mother and Child
• Life Signs, Pulsar

Music:

• Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F. First Movement, Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, conductor. 4:40
• Java, court gamelan, "Kinds of Flowers," recorded by Robert Brown. 4:43
• Senegal, percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle. 2:08
• Zaire, Pygmy girls' initiation song, recorded by Colin Turnbull. 0:56
• Australia, Aborigine songs, "Morning Star" and "Devil Bird," recorded by Sandra LeBrun Holmes. 1:26
• Mexico, "El Cascabel," performed by Lorenzo Barcelata and the Mariachi México. 3:14
• "Johnny B. Goode," written and performed by Chuck Berry. 2:38
• New Guinea, men's house song, recorded by Robert MacLennan. 1:20
• Japan, shakuhachi, "Cranes in Their Nest," performed by Coro Yamaguchi. 4:51
• Bach, "Gavotte en rondeaux" from the Partita No. 3 in E major for Violin, performed by Arthur Grumiaux. 2:55
• Mozart, The Magic Flute, Queen of the Night aria, no. 14. Edda Moser, soprano. Bavarian State Opera, Munich, Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor. 2:55
• Georgian S.S.R., chorus, "Tchakrulo," collected by Radio Moscow. 2:18
• Peru, panpipes and drum, collected by Casa de la Cultura, Lima. 0:52
• "Melancholy Blues," performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven. 3:05
• Azerbaijan S.S.R., bagpipes, recorded by Radio Moscow. 2:30
• Stravinsky, Rite of Spring, Sacrificial Dance, Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Igor Stravinsky, conductor. 4:35
• Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Prelude and Fugue in C, No.1. Glenn Gould, piano. 4:48
• Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, conductor. 7:20
• Bulgaria, "Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin," sung by Valya Balkanska. 4:59
• Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes. 0:57
• Holborne, Paueans, Galliards, Almains and Other Short Aeirs, "The Fairie Round," performed by David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London. 1:17
• Solomon Islands, panpipes, collected by the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Service. 1:12
• Peru, wedding song, recorded by John Cohen. 0:38
• China, ch'in, "Flowing Streams," performed by Kuan P'ing-hu. 7:37
• India, raga, "Jaat Kahan Ho," sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar. 3:30
• "Dark Was the Night," written and performed by Blind Willie Johnson. 3:15
• Beethoven, String Quartet No. 13 in B flat, Opus 130, Cavatina, performed by Budapest String Quartet 6:37

---o0o---

The Crypt of Civilization

By Jack Brummet
Paranormal and Unexplained Phenomena Editor

The Crypt of Civilization is an airtight chamber situated at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta.  The chamber is filled with artifacts specially preserved for the long haul.  It is "scheduled" to be opened in the year 8113.  The 1990 Guinness Book of World Records calls the crypt the "first successful attempt to bury a record of this culture for any future inhabitants or visitors to the planet Earth."  They even included generators, power sources, and various media players in order for the discoverers to be able to dig right in. 

That's probably true, although we did send off the Voyager into deep space with some of the same sorts of artifacts, in hopes they might be discovered many many centuries from now.  We sent a golden "record" and a player that contained all sorts of photographic and audio information about us, and how we live.  You can read an article on the golden record on All This Is That that we published six years ago.

The Crypt of Civilization chamber sits on Appalachian granite bedrock located in the foundation of Phoebe Hearst Memorial Hall at Oglethorpe University.  The room was converted from a swimming pool from 1937 to 1940 and the walls were lined with enamel plates.

The crypt contains airtight receptacles with microfilm on cellulose acetate film with 800 classic works of literature, including the Bible, the Koran, Homer's Iliad, and Dante's Inferno. There are approximately 640,000 pages included, as well as audio recordings and other cultural bits and pieces.  The Crypt room is 20 feet long, 10 feet high and 10 feet wide  under a stone roof seven feet thick and over a two-foot stone floor.   It is sealed with a stainless steel door welded in place.

Wow.

---o0o---

Neil Young's Time Fades Away (Release it again, Neil!)

With Greendale, Neil Young proved he is absolutely no nostalgia act. Not that there was even a bit of a chance. Here are the lyrics to Don't Be Denied on his 1973 record Time Fades Away. This record has never been released on CD and has been criminally out of print for decades now. I have always loved it, and admit it is one of the few bootlegs I own. . . Not only does it contain the great title track, but also a beautiful ballad, The Bridge, and Don't Be Denied...one of the rawest and most ragged tunes he ever released (but great nonetheless).

It was almost an act of insanity to release it. Virtually no one but The Grateful Dead had ever released a live album of unreleased material. The recordings are murky, dark and erratic, and you can hear mike bumps and other mistakes. This (along with Tonight's The Night) shows an artist poised on the brink of disaster...almost publicly unraveling. Neil has said it is the worst record he ever made (ergo he has not re-released it).

Explaining his direction on those two albums, and on On The Beach, he said:

"Heart of Gold put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch."

Don't Be Denied

When I was a young boy,
My mama said to me
Your daddy's leavin' home today,
I think he's gone to stay.
We packed up all our bags
And drove out to Winnipeg.

When we got to Winnipeg
I checked in to school.
I wore white bucks on my feet,
When I learned the golden rule.
The punches came fast and hard
Lying on my back
in the school yard.

Don't be denied, don't be denied.
Don't be denied, don't be denied.
Don't be denied, don't be denied.

Well pretty soon I met a friend,
He played guitar.
We used to sit
on the steps at school
And dream of being stars.
We started a band,
We played all night.

Don't be denied, don't be denied.
Don't be denied, don't be denied.
Don't be denied, don't be denied.

Oh Canada
We played all night
I really hate to leave you now
But to stay just wouldn't be right.
Down in Hollywood
We played so good

The businessmen crowded around
They came to hear the golden sound
There we were on the Sunset Strip,
Playing our songs
for the highest bid.
We played all night
The price was right.

Don't be denied, don't be denied.
Don't be denied, don't be denied.
Don't be denied, don't be denied.

Well, all that glitters isn't gold
I know you've heard
that story told.
And I'm a pauper
in a naked disguise
A millionaire
through a business man's eyes.
Oh friend of mine
Don't be denied.
---o0o---

Message In A Bottle

click to enlarge

The picture on the left went into space with one of our early interstellar craft. It explains where earth is [1], what homo sapiens looked like naked (like Barbie and Ken), and other information, like a diagram indicating the location of our sun.

Nasa's Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) has been working on this "Interstellar Outreach Program" for many years [2]. The gold-plated disk above, is a bronze record containing sounds and images of life on earth. Each of the two Voyagers is equipped with a record player of sorts--with a cartridge, even--to play the disk, and recover the images.

The two circles in the bottom right side of the record show the two lowest states of a hydrogen atom. The vertical lines on the circles show the spin moment of the electron and proton. And (is this cool, or what?) the transition time from one state to the next provides the fundamental clock reference used in ALL the cover diagrams and the images to be decoded from binaries.

Carl Sagan and a team of other folks designed and selected the Voyager's messages and data. The disk includes a greeting in 55 different languages, from Aramaic to Vietnamese. The record also includes a sampler of non-human Earth sounds such as wind, rain, surf, chimps, sheep, crickets, saws, and trains. It contains photos as well, and maps, diagrams of DNA, vertebrate anatomy charts, chemical and mathematical definitions, and other visual displays. The disk includes Beethoven, a Chuck Berry tune (Johnny B, Goode), Bach and Mozart, a Navajo chant, Indian Ragas, and a Louis Armstrong recording. There are 116 binary images on the record.

No one know if the aliens who find this will be able to use it, or decode the information. Will they even have hands? Opposable thumbs? Will they even think in any path parallel to ours? Will the disk just look like gibberish to them? Their scientists--if they have science (and we assume they must)--may need to study the disk for a couple of thousand years before they make a breakthrough.

A book titled Murmurs of the Earth, writtten by Sagan and colleagues, was reissued in 1992 with a CD-ROM compilation of the Golden Record, and a description of its creation. It's out of print, but you can pick up a copy fairly cheaply.

The movie Starman portrayed the Voyager Golden Record being located by an extra-terrestial intelligence who subsequently sent one of their own race to investigate intelligent life on Earth.

Don't hold your breath that any of our cousins in other galaxies will find this and come to visit. The Voyager will not come close to another star for something like 40,000 years. But then again, when you're dealing with our alien cousins Out There, 40,000 years may just be a sneeze in the winds of time.

[1] Or, maybe by the time it is found, where earth was.
[2] We also regularly beam messages out into the void, and hopefully, to our alien cousins, through our Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico.
---o0o---