On August 20th 1977, Humanity took its most ambitious leap in science, the leap to preserve its steadily decaying identity.
Started off as a program to study the outer solar system, the Voyager 1 and 2 were launched to take advantage of the favourable alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune; It soon became the first and the only man-made object to travel interstellar space. But this spacecraft is no ordinary space craft; it contained what we call an anecdote of humanity itself.
Led by famous astrophysicist Carl Sagan, the probes contained a Golden Record. He and his associates gathered around 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals to summarise humans and life on earth. They also gathered songs from different parts of the world, from Chuck Berry of America to Sushri Kesar Bai Kerkar of India; It also had greetings in more than fifty languages.
The board of members including Carl Sagan consensually removed accounts of war, poverty, diseases and religion.
"The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space." said Carl Sagan.
The voyager is now on the empty space, it will take it 40000 years before it comes to contact with a planetary system, "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet." Said Carl Sagan
The in depth account of the Voyager record is called "Murmurs of Earth".
There is no better way to pay homage to our beautiful planet which provided endlessly to our needs, unless humans themselves realise it.
For more such features subscribe to Jiyo Nation.
