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The Voyager Golden Record.		Cover of the Voyager Golden Record.

The Voyager Golden Record are phonograph records which were included aboard both Voyager spacecraft, which were launched in 1977. They contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or far future humans, who may find them. The Voyager spacecraft are not heading towards any particular star, but Voyager 1 will be within 1.6 light years of the star AC+79 3888 in the Ophiuchus constellation in about 40,000 years.

As the probes are extremely small compared to the vastness of interstellar space, it is extraordinarily unlikely that they will ever be accidentally encountered. If they are ever found by an alien species, it will most likely be far in the future, and thus the record is best seen as a time capsule or a symbolic statement rather than a serious attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life.

The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University. Dr. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind, and thunder, and animal sounds, including the songs of birds and whales. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, spoken greetings in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Jimmy Carter and U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.

After NASA had received criticism over the nudity on the Pioneer plaque (line drawings of a naked man and woman), the agency chose not to allow Sagan and his colleagues to include a photograph of a nude man and woman on the record. Instead, only a silhouette of the couple was included.

Here is an excerpt of President Carter’s official statement placed on the Voyager spacecraft for its trip outside our solar system, June 16, 1977:

We cast this message into the cosmos… Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some — perhaps many — may have inhabited planets and space faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message: We are trying to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope some day, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of Galactic Civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe.

The 115 images are encoded in analogue form. The remainder of the record is audio, designed to be played at 16⅔ revolutions per minute.

Greetings

The first audio section contains spoken greetings in the following 55 languages^[3], including 4 Chinese dialects (marked with **) and 12 South Asian languages (marked #) listed here in alphabetical order:

Sounds

The next audio section is devoted to the “sounds of Earth” that include:

Included within the Sounds of Earth audio portion of the Golden Record is a track containing the inspirational message per aspera ad astra in Morse Code. Translated from Latin, it means, through hardships to the stars.

Music

Following the section on the sounds of Earth, there is an eclectic 90-minute selection of music from many cultures, including Eastern and Western classics. The selections include:

Country	Piece	Author	Performer(s)	Recorded or collected by	Genre of music	Length
Germany	Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F. First Movement	Bach	Munich Bach Orchestra conducted by Karl Richter		Chamber orchestra	4:40
Indonesia	“Puspawarna” (“Kinds of Flowers”)	Mangkunegara IV	Court gamelan of Pura Paku Alaman directed by K.R.T. Wasitodipuro	Robert E. Brown	Gamelan	4:43
Senegal	Senegalese percussion			Charles Duvelle	Percussion	2:08
Zaire	Pygmy girls’ initiation song			Colin Turnbull		0:56
Australia	“Morning Star” and “Devil Bird”			Sandra LeBrun Holmes	Aboriginal songs	1:26
Mexico	“El Cascabel”	Lorenzo Barcelata	Antonio Maciel y Las Aguilillas with El Mariachi México de Pepe Villa			3:14
United States	“Johnny B. Goode“	Chuck Berry	Chuck Berry		Rock and roll	2:03
New Guinea	Men’s house song			Robert MacLennan		1:20
Japan	“Tsuru No Sugomori” 《鶴の巣籠り》 (“Crane’s Nest”)		Goro Yamaguchi		Shakuhachi	4:51
Germany/Belgium	“Gavotte en rondeaux” from the Partita No. 3 in E major for Violin	Bach	Arthur Grumiaux		Violin	2:55
Austria/Germany	Die Zauberflöte, Queen of the Night aria No. 14 Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen	Mozart	Edda Moser (soprano) from the Bavarian State Opera, conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch		Opera	2:55
Georgia	“Tchakrulo”	Georgian Folk		Radio Moscow	Chorus	2:18
Peru	El Cóndor Pasa	Daniel Alomia Robles		Casa de la Cultura, Lima	Panpipes and drum	0:52
United States	“Melancholy Blues“		Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven		Jazz	3:05
Azerbaijan	“Mugam“			Radio Moscow	Balaban	2:30
Russia/France/United States	The Rite of Spring, Sacrificial Dance	Stravinsky	Columbia Symphony Orchestra conducted by Igor Stravinsky			4:35
Germany/Canada	The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Prelude and Fugue No.1 in C major	Bach	Glenn Gould	Kevin Doyle	Piano	4:48
Germany/United Kingdom	Fifth Symphony, First Movement	Beethoven	Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Otto Klemperer			7:20
Bulgaria	“Излел е Делю хайдутин” (“Izlel je Delyo Hajdutin”)		Valya Balkanska	Ethel Rain and Martin Koenig	Bulgarian traditional song	4:59
United States	Night Chant	Navajo Tribe		Willard Rhodes		0:57
United Kingdom	“The Fairie Round” from Pavans, Galliards, Almains and Other Short Aeirs	Anthony Holborne	David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London			1:17
Solomon Islands				Solomon Islands Broadcasting Service	Panpipes	1:12
Peru	Wedding song			John Cohen		0:38
China	“Liu Shui” 《流水》 (“Flowing Streams”)	Bo Ya	Kuan P’ing-hu		Guqin	7:37
India	“Jaat Kahan Ho”		Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar		Raga Bhairavi	3:30
United States	“Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground“	Blind Willie Johnson	Blind Willie Johnson		Blues	3:15
Germany/Hungary	Cavatina from the String Quartet No. 13 in B flat, Opus 130	Beethoven	Budapest String Quartet		String Quartet	6:37

• Johann Sebastian Bach is the most represented artist, appearing three times, and, with the addition of two pieces by Beethoven, make Germany the most represented country with six appearances, followed by the United States.

Sagan had originally asked for permission to include “Here Comes the Sun” from the Beatles’ album Abbey Road. While the Beatles favoured it, EMI opposed it and the song was not included.

Brainwaves

The Golden Records also carried an hour long recording of the brainwaves of Ann Druyan, the wife of Carl Sagan. In the Epilogue of the book Billions and Billions, she describes the experience:

Earlier I had asked Carl if those putative extraterrestrials of a billion years from now could conceivably interpret the brain waves of a meditator. Who knows? A billion years is a long, long time, was his reply. On the chance that it might be possible why don’t we give it a try?Two days after our life-changing phone call, I entered a laboratory at Bellevue Hospital in New York City and was hooked up to a computer that turned all the data from my brain and heart into sound. I had a one-hour mental itinerary of the information I wished to convey. I began by thinking about the history of Earth and the life it sustains. To the best of my abilities I tried to think something of the history of ideas and human social organization. I thought about the predicament that our civilization finds itself in and about the violence and poverty that make this planet a hell for so many of its inhabitants. Toward the end I permitted myself a personal statement of what it was like to fall in love^.