The Dynamics of Scientific Knowledge - Mapping Scientific Frontiers: The Quest for Knowledge Visualization - page 29

Fig. 1.13 Voyagers' message

spoken in Sumer about 6,000 years ago, and ending with Wu, a modern Chinese
dialect. Following the section on the sounds of Earth, there is an eclectic 90-min
selection of music, including both Eastern and Western classics and a variety of
ethnic music. It will be 40,000 years before they make a close approach to any other
planetary system. In Carl Sagan's words, “The spacecraft will be encountered and
the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar
space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very
hopeful about life on this planet.”
A 12-in. gold plated copper disk containing recorded sounds and images
representing human cultures and life on Earth is affixed to each Voyager - a
message in a bottle cast into the cosmic sea. The disks are like a phonograph
record. Cartridge and needle are supplied, along with some simple diagrams, which
represent symbolically the spacecraft's origin and instructions for playing the disk.
Figure 1.14 shows instructions on Voyager's plaque. Now see if you would be able
to understand them if you were an alien.
The Voyager record is detailed in “ Murmurs of Earth ” (1978) by Sagan, Drake,
Lomberg et al. This is the story behind the creation of the record, and includes a