Maybe extraterrestrials will be able to figure this out after all.
Article by Cory Zapatka via The Verge: Decoding images from TGR
More than 11 billion miles away from Earth,
two small discs are rocketing through space at speeds in excess of 37,200 miles per hour. Their journey started in 1977, when NASA sent the two Golden Records into space, bolted to the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft. The records contain a treasure trove of information about our home planet, including sounds, songs, and images from Earth.
At the moment, the records are just hangers-on to the Voyagers’ current mission,
to document the outer limits of the Sun’s influence on the Solar System. By 2030, however, both Voyagers will cease communicating with NASA, but they will continue sailing through space. At that point, they will have only one mission: continue on with the Golden Records in hopes that another advanced civilization, somewhere in the galaxy, intercepts them.
The audio contained on the record should be fairly easy to decode — extraterrestrials will only need to figure out the correct speed and rotation of the disks, place the included stylus within the grooves of the record, and jam out to Chuck Berry, Mozart, and the sounds of the Earth.
The First Ever Decoded VGR
Take a look at TheVerge video to see how they decoded the Golden Record — and maybe give it a try yourself.
Donating their time and expertise to the project,
engineers at Colorado Video projected each Voyager slide onto a television camera lens,
generating a signal that their machine converted into several seconds of sound per photo.
A diagram on the aluminum cover of the Golden Record explains how to play it and decode the images. Four decades later, Ron Barry followed the instructions and decoded the images on the Voyager Golden Record
How to decode the images on the Voyager Golden Record
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibByF9XPAPg Editor's note: Forty years ago today, NASA launched Voyager 1, the second of two spacecraft on a grand tour of the solar system and into the mysteries of interstellar space. Attached to each spacecraft is a Golden Record containing Earth's greatest music, spoken greetings, "Sounds of Earth," and more than 100 images encoded as...
