#Explanation of voyager golden records how to
#Explanation of voyager golden records code

Then, the record equates those values with numbers written in binary as well as base 10, which is our ordinary number system.īinary writes every number using powers of two. The Golden Record committee chose to start by illustrating numbers in the simplest way - a number of dots, which the aliens should be able to count in any number system. See how the Voyager spacecraft worked in this infographic here. The unmanned Voyager 1 and 2 probes were launched in 1977 on a mission to visit all the outer planets of the solar system. This shape's there so the aliens can make sure their calibrations were correct and they're seeing the photos correctly. If the spacecraft's alien interceptors understand the instructions to play the record, and therefore recover the sounds of Earth as well as the photos encoded at the end, the first image they would see would be a circle. 'The issue is how much time do you devote to it and how many smart friends do you bring in on the project,' he added. 'Well, if we found something that was an artifact, we'd spend more than a few minutes, and we'd bring in people from all kinds of disciplines, because you don't know who's going to have the insight.

#Explanation of voyager golden records how to

'A lot of people look at this - the cover diagram I made, for example, how to play the record - and they can't figure it out in a couple of minutes, so they conclude that extraterrestrials will never be able to figure it out,' Lomberg said. Hydrogen takes a specific amount of time to transition from one state to the other, producing a specific wavelength of light - both of which are used as basic units of measurement within the record.Īn explanation of the Golden Record's cover, complete with playing instructions. The second diagram is of the second-lowest and lowest energy states for a hydrogen atom. No matter where aliens are looking from, if they're close enough, they could triangulate the sun's location using its position relative to those pulsars. Pulsars, which can form when a dying star collapses, can serve as handy waypoints in space, because their rapid blinking can be extremely regular and distinctive.

#Explanation of voyager golden records code

One is a map of Earth's location in space compared to 14 rapidly rotating, ultradense neutron stars the size of cities called pulsars the dashes and lines along each encode how quickly the stars pulse with radiation (more on that code later). The two bottom-most images are more interesting. If decoded properly, the first image seen should be a circle.

The Golden Record's cover, facing outward from where the record was placed on the two spacecraft's sides, gets straight to the point in depicting how the media is to be used - the top diagrams show how the record should be placed on its player and how images can be decoded from a certain portion of the disk. The Golden Record's cover gave instructions for how to play it as well as a map of Earth's place in the galaxy.