Golden record

I give you my new obsession: the Voyager 1 space probe. This exceptional spacecraft was launched in 1977 and toured nearly the whole solar system, exploring Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune and its moons, and has become the farthest man-made object, reaching a distance of nearly 17 billion kilometers (or 15 light hours) from Earth, traveling at a speed of around 45 km per second.

This space probe is still functioning and receiving commands from Earth, and will probably be functional until 2025, when its power source will run out.

Included with the spacecraft is the so-called Golden Record: a phonograph record that includes instructions on how to play the content, which is made up from music and sounds and images from Earth. I found the NASA page that has many of the images available, which is pretty freaky if you take a look at them (see top of post)-- these are the images which are supposed to help an alien civilization understand about mankind. Makes you wonder who selected these pics and how..

Voyager - Scenes From Earth

A much better insight about humankind can be gathered in the comments of the NASA blog though: in the poll "What would you put on a new Golden Record?", there's the usual cornucopia of dumb, asinine, funny, creepy, and stupid comments of any page or poll on the Internet, ..pretty funny.

342: send a rubix cube, that will confuse the little critters.

338: If you have oil we may be able to come to some sort of arrangement.
Best Regards
Earth

328: I would add the book Battlefield Earth, with the comment, we do not want things to go this way.

274: voyager space is very nice probe.. because this probe, explore the solar system...

What Would You Put on a New Golden Record