In a tiny corner of the newspaper I saw an article reporting that the Voyager spacecraft had left our solar system and was now heading to interstellar space. Voyager, launched in 1977 was now the first man made object to go “where no man had gone before.” WOW!
We are, at the core of our very being, explorers, fearless in our desire to see around the next corner. From the early sailors embarking on the mysterious and forbidding ocean to the artist who busts convention wide open with a new idea. But the Voyager spacecraft is something so unique that it exemplifies this spirit of wonder found in our human desire to push boundary after boundary.
The Voyager not only contained equipment to perform a variety of deep space and planetary experiments, it also had camera that delivered spectacular photos of our solar neighbors. In between all of this science equipment was something else, something filled with human imagination, the ultimate mix tape. Ann Druyan and Carl Sagan (who fell in love during this little project) came up with the idea.
On a golden disc was our greeting to the universe. This tiny craft traveling at approximately 35,000 miles per hour for, who knows, maybe 1,000 million years had a human “hello” attached to it. Music from ancient China, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and even Chuck Berry. Hello’s in the 59 primary languages of our little “pale blue dot” of a planet, a whale song, 115 different pictures, a map and some basic binary mathematics Hey, citizens of the cosmos, here’s a little something from the explorers on earth.
So, here’s to our great present to the universe. I hope they dig Chuck Berry
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