I’ve mentioned the Golden Record in a previous post but I just discovered that you can listen to the contents and look at the images online.
You can also listen to it here!
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/129030648″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]It’s a bit of a time capsule.
If an alien could figure out how to listen to this, I wonder what they’d make of it. And what they might infer about the people who collected these sounds and images?
And thanks to whoever put this video on YouTube. In it, Carl Sagan, one of the people responsible for selecting the contents of the Golden Record, talks about the record and other things on The Tonight Show (1977), not with Johnny Carson, but with guest host John Denver. It’s a wonderful clip that goes from talk about Voyager, to then recent photos of Mars, to the intelligence of whales and dolphins.
I have a new found respect for John Denver.
Haroon
I was late to class this morning because i was watching this video. Astronomy class at that. I love Carl Sagan. He takes such crazy, hard to grasp, cosmic ideas and boils it down to a level that any common man can understand. I saw this video where he was explaining space and time and he starts off with “if you want to bake an apple pie from scratch, you need to first invent space and time.” He’s great.
Great video.
David Licata
Haroon,
Yeah, that was Sagan’s great gift. I have such fond memories of seeing him on tv. Cosmos. And the Tonight Show. “Billlll-lions and billll-lions.” I felt the same when I interviewed Jill Tarter. I remember thinking at one point during the interview (she was talking about how searching for a signal involves nine dimensions) My mind is blown, but I still understand what she’s saying? How can that be?