[X] My Assistant

[ljk4-1]

Voyager - A message from Earth

Saturday 19 November 2005

Summary

Jon Lomberg is an artist who could be called portrait painter to the cosmos. He illustrated most of Carl Sagan's books and articles and his paintings and multi-media presentations of astronomy have made him well known around the world. He's talking about the message he designed which was sent on Voyager II from the people of Earth to whoever might hear it in space.

Program Transcript:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s1505986.htm

[djellison]

Such a response is equally likely from the plaque. They might find the sounds from earth on the disk just as offensive as the sounds of reality TV

Doug

[ljk4-1]

Such a response is equally likely from the plaque.  They might find the sounds  from earth on the disk just as offensive as the sounds of reality TV

Doug

Pretend you have never heard of Earth or humans before. What would you imagine these sounds on the Voyager Record to be from:

http://re-lab.net/welcome/sounds2.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record

In Carl Sagan's The Cosmic Connection, there is a great section reproduced from the old British Punch magazine imagining how different ETI who encounter the Pioneer Plaque react to it. The spindly beings who look like the pulsar map are especially put off, as the lines are positioned in the rudest way imaginable.

http://www.stmarys.ca/academic/conted/webc...le1/page01.html

http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/cata...isbn=0521783038

There is also a great SF story in the old Omni magazine from 1978 about one of the Voyagers going through a black hole and splitting into numerous copies of itself into different parallel universes. Some very different ETI find the probe and its record, all having very different reactions to it. The last part is entwined with the actual Amoy language greeting that asks the ETI if they have eaten yet and to please come visit us when they have the time.

http://re-lab.net/welcome/lang.html

[djellison]

Pretend you have never heard of Earth or humans before.

Physically impossible

You can find members of our species who would find Classical to be utter tripe compared to Drum and Bass, or those who find Drum and Bass the work of satan himself compared to that of Schubert. If the opinion of people within a single species w.r.t. its creations vary so hugely, then one can not even being to imagine what they might be elsewhere. There is no means by which one could possibly gauge any reaction to the contents of these things nor the signals we have been sending out for 50 years or so by a species other than our own. Any suggestion is pure random speculation and infinitly more likely to be wrong that right.

It could range from "ug" to "INVADE AND DESTROY WITH OUR PHOTON BOMB"


Doug