50 Fun Facts About Voyager Golden Record

How many Golden Records were sent into space, and where?

They are identical phonograph records launched in 1977, intended as a time capsule for any intelligent finder.

Which astronomer chaired the committee that selected the contents of the record?

It took almost a year; NASA project manager John Casani gave him a $1,500 budget and six weeks, and the team spent their own money too.

Whose idea was it to put a message about humanity aboard the Voyagers?

He delegated the job to Sagan, who with Linda Salzman and Frank Drake settled on a metal record rather than tape.

Why did Sagan's team choose a metal phonograph record over the obvious alternative?

Casani insisted the record weigh no more than the Pioneer plaque.

How many images are encoded on the record?

One is used for calibration; each picture is made of 512 vertical scan lines.

Spoken greetings on the record are in how many languages?

They were re-recorded by Cornell language departments after the UN delegates' versions had problems, and cover over 65% of humanity's native speakers.

Which UN Secretary-General recorded the English greeting on the record?

Sagan's six-year-old son Nick also recorded a greeting.

What Latin phrase is sent in Morse code among the record's 'sounds of Earth'?

It means 'through hardships to the stars'.

Which US president's printed message is included on the record?

It calls the record 'a present from a small, distant world' and expresses the hope of one day joining 'a community of galactic civilizations'.

Whose brainwaves, recorded for an hour and compressed into a minute, are on the record?

The creative director thought about Earth's history, civilisation's problems and what it was like to fall in love; she married Sagan in 1981.

Which Chuck Berry song was included, despite Alan Lomax objecting that rock music was 'adolescent'?

Sagan's reply: 'There are a lot of adolescents on the planet.'

Which Beatles song was reportedly considered but left off because EMI would not license it?

Ann Druyan recalled EMI wanting $50,000 per record; Timothy Ferris says it was never seriously considered.

Which future star record producer served as sound engineer, on John Lennon's recommendation?

Lennon himself was contacted to contribute but could not take part.

Which blues guitarist's hymn 'Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground' is on the record?

The gospel-blues slide guitar piece from 1927 was chosen to express loneliness.

Which jazz trumpeter is among the musicians on the record?

The 90-minute music selection ranges from Bach and Beethoven to a Chinese guqin piece and a Bulgarian folk song.

Which electronic composer's work is on the record?

She sits alongside Chinese, Indian, Bulgarian and Azerbaijani musicians in a deliberately global selection.

Which of these classical composers is NOT named as being represented on the record?

Beethoven is there too; the selection was completed by a team including ethnomusicologists Robert E. Brown and Alan Lomax.

The cetacean recordings on the record came from Roger Payne's 1970 album titled what?

Roger Payne's recordings had helped launch the save-the-whales movement.

Why did NASA refuse to allow a photograph of a nude man and woman on the record?

Only a silhouette went in, though Jon Lomberg's vertebrate-evolution diagram still shows anatomically correct figures.

On the record's vertebrate-evolution diagram, which figure waves, reversing the earlier plaque?

On the Pioneer plaque it was the man who raised his hand.

At what speed is the record designed to be played?

One rotation takes 3.6 seconds, a figure encoded on the cover in units of the hydrogen transition time.

What is the record made of?

The 12-inch copper disc was plated first with nickel and then gold; the aluminium cover carries a sample of uranium-238.

Why is a sample of uranium-238 electroplated onto the cover?

Its half-life is 4.468 billion years; the ratio of remaining uranium reveals the record's age.

What inscription was hand-etched into the record's run-out groove, nearly getting it rejected?

It was not in the specifications, so the record was initially to be swapped for a blank; Sagan talked the administrator round.

The map on the record's cover locates the Sun relative to how many pulsars?

It is the same pulsar map that flew on the Pioneer 10 and 11 plaques.

How long does one side of the record take to play, according to the binary number on the cover?

More precisely between 53 and 54 minutes; the drawing shows the stylus should play from the outside in.

How are colour pictures stored on the record?

A colour image of the Sun's spectrum was included for calibration.

How many vertical lines make up each picture on the record?

That is 2 to the ninth power; a circle in the first picture lets finders check their aspect ratio.

Where were the record's lacquer masters cut?

Pyral in France supplied the blanks, JVC in Boulder cut the masters and eight discs were plated in Gardena.

How many Voyager records were made in total?

Only two flew; the rest stayed on Earth.

Which star will Voyager 1 pass within about 1.6 light-years of in roughly 40,000 years?

Voyager 2 will approach Ross 248 in Andromeda on a similar timescale.

Which spacecraft became the farthest human-made object from Earth in 1998?

Voyager 1 overtook Pioneer 10 in February 1998. Both Voyagers have reached interstellar space; Voyager 1 got there in August 2012, as NASA announced the following year.

Which earlier probes carried a simple engraved plaque that set the precedent for the record?

The Pioneer plaque was the idea of Eric Burgess and Carl Sagan.

What was the budget John Casani gave Sagan for the record?

Six weeks of work, though the team put in more of their own money; Druyan later put the whole cost at $18,000.

Which 1978 book by the record team tells the story of its creation and reproduces most of the images?

It reproduces most of the images in black and white; a CD-ROM edition followed in 1992.

Which label's 40th-anniversary vinyl box set of the record won a Grammy in 2018?

Its Kickstarter raised over $1.4 million; the set won for best boxed or limited-edition package.

Where did NASA make the record's audio available to stream in 2015?

The Golden Record: Sounds of Earth page is still online.

Which of the two probes launched first, and when?

Despite the numbering, Voyager 2 went up sixteen days before Voyager 1, both on Titan IIIE rockets from Cape Canaveral.

Who was creative director of the record project and later married its chairman?

She co-wrote Cosmos and described the brainwave session in the epilogue of Sagan's last book, Billions and Billions.

Which astronomer on the record team is known for an equation estimating communicating civilisations?

He helped Sagan settle on the record format and had earlier co-designed the Pioneer plaque.

Which famous photograph did Voyager 1 take of Earth on 14 February 1990 from over 6 billion km away?

Sagan had campaigned for the camera to be turned back toward home.

In what year did NASA announce that Voyager 1 had entered interstellar space?

It had crossed the termination shock in 2004 and the heliopause in August 2012, though it remains inside the Sun's gravitational reach.

What metaphor did Sagan use for the launch of the record?

He noted it would only be played if advanced space-faring civilisations exist, but that launching it said something hopeful about life on Earth.

Which star will Voyager 2 approach in about 40,000 years, in the constellation Andromeda?

Neither probe is aimed at a star; each will pass within about 1.8 light-years of its respective star.

Which French company supplied the blank records for the Golden Record?

CBS Records then had the lacquer masters cut in Boulder and the eight final discs plated at a processing centre in Gardena, California.

Who recorded a greeting on the record at the age of six?

The disc also carries Sagan's own laughter among the human sounds, alongside footsteps and greetings in 55 languages.

Which metal is plated onto the copper disc beneath its gold layer?

The 12-inch copper disc was plated first with nickel and then gold, then mounted in an aluminium container for delivery to JPL.

How long is one rotation of the record, as written in binary on its cover?

The time is expressed in units of 0.7 billionths of a second, the period of the hydrogen atom's fundamental transition.

What is the half-life of the uranium-238 sample on the record's cover?

A finder could use mass spectrometry to compare the remaining uranium with its decay products and date the record.

How much did Ozma Records' Kickstarter raise for the record's 40th-anniversary vinyl box set?

The box set included a hardcover book, slipmat and art print, and the 2018 edition won a Grammy for best boxed package.