48 Fun Facts About Voyager Golden Record

Which famous primatologist appears in one of the photographs encoded on the Golden Record?

Jane Goodall's picture with her chimpanzees is credited to her mother, Vanne, who had gone with her to Gombe in 1960 because officials would not let her stay there alone.

NASA vetoed one photograph chosen for the record, letting it fly only as a silhouette; what did it show?

A nude man and woman, photographed by George Hester, were cut because NASA had been criticised for the naked figures on an earlier spacecraft plaque; an outline of the couple took their place.

One of the record's 55 spoken greetings asks any listeners which homely question?

'Have you eaten yet?' is part of the greeting in Amoy, a Chinese dialect, which opens 'Friends from space, how are you all?' and closes by inviting the listeners to come and visit.

Why did the record's team choose a metal phonograph disc over magnetic tape?

It would outlast tape in space: the team judged that a metal disc would long outlive magnetic tape, and its grooves could carry coded pictures as well as sound.

Which American landscape photographer supplied two of the record's pictures, including a view of the Golden Gate Bridge?

Ansel Adams took the Golden Gate Bridge view and a study of the Snake River below the Tetons; most of the record's photographs are in colour, but his two travel as he made them, in black and white.

Many of the record's spoken greetings in 55 languages were recorded at which university?

Cornell's language departments stepped in after United Nations delegates, asked for short greetings, made speeches instead; the new speakers got no script, only a request to keep it brief.

Which UN Secretary-General recorded a spoken message for the record?

Kurt Waldheim spoke for the United Nations in English; nine years later it emerged that he had concealed his wartime service as a German army intelligence officer in the Balkans.

Which composer has the most pieces on the record?

Bach has three pieces on the record, more than anyone else; the producers reasoned that even beings without hearing could find the symmetries in his music by studying the grooves.

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

President Jimmy Carter's printed message calls the record 'a present from a small, distant world' and voices 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?

Ann Druyan, the record's creative director, spent the hour thinking about Earth's history, human ideas and what it is like to fall in love; she married Carl Sagan in 1981.

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

Johnny B. Goode, Chuck Berry's 1958 hit, is the record's only rock 'n' roll track; when Alan Lomax called rock adolescent, the reply was that there are a lot of adolescents on the planet.

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

Here Comes the Sun was reportedly the Beatles' choice, with the band willing but EMI refusing to license it; producer Timothy Ferris later called the story apocryphal, saying it was never seriously considered.

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

Jimmy Iovine, then a young New York studio engineer who had worked with John Lennon, engineered the record's audio after Lennon, unable to take part himself, suggested him.

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

Blind Willie Johnson recorded the piece in 1927, humming over his slide guitar; it was chosen because it speaks of a plight as old as humanity, nightfall with no place to sleep.

Which jazz trumpeter is among the musicians on the record?

Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven's 'Melancholy Blues' is the record's jazz track; he learned to play the cornet properly in a New Orleans boys' home, sent there at 11 for firing a gun on New Year's Eve.

Which electronic composer's work is on the record?

Laurie Spiegel's computer realisation of Kepler's Harmonices Mundi, heard as 'Music of the Spheres', opens the record's sounds-of-Earth sequence; she created it on Bell Labs' GROOVE system.

The record's Queen of the Night aria comes from which Mozart opera?

The Magic Flute's 'Der Hölle Rache' flies in a Bavarian State Opera recording; in the opera the Queen sings it as she hands her daughter a dagger and orders her to kill.

On the record, greetings from United Nations delegates are blended with the songs of which animals?

Humpback whales, recorded by the biologist Roger Payne, did not fit the sequence of Earth sounds, so producer Timothy Ferris mixed their songs in with the diplomats instead.

The first movement of which Beethoven symphony is on the record?

The Fifth's first movement is on the record in Otto Klemperer's recording; its four-note opening had served the BBC as a 'V for Victory' call sign in broadcasts during the Second World War.

At what speed is the record designed to be played?

The record is cut for 16⅔ rpm, half the usual LP speed, which doubled the playing time of each side; the cover gives the time of one rotation in binary so that finders can set the speed.

What is the Golden Record made of?

Gold-plated copper discs, 12 inches across and sealed in aluminium cases, are expected by their makers to stay readable for more than a billion years.

Why is uranium-238 electroplated onto the record's cover?

So finders can date it from its decay: half of any uranium-238 breaks down every 4.5 billion years, so the share left acts as a clock showing how long the record has travelled.

The hand-etched dedication 'To the makers of music – all worlds, all times' nearly led NASA to do what?

Fly blank discs instead: that was NASA's plan once an inspector found the words were not in the blueprints, until Sagan won a waiver by arguing they were the only human handwriting aboard.

The star map on the record's cover fixes the Sun's position using 14 of which objects?

Pulsars each tick at their own steady rate, so the map gives every one's period in binary; a finder who recognised them could work out both where the craft came from and when it left.

According to the binary number on its cover, how long does one side of the record play?

About an hour is the playing time written in binary beside a side view of the disc and stylus; the cover's instructions are all given in drawings and numbers instead of words.

How are colour pictures stored on the record?

As three frames for red, green and blue: each colour picture is sent three times over, once per colour, and a picture of the Sun's spectrum is included so that finders can calibrate the result.

The Latin motto meaning 'to the stars through hardship' is carried on the record in which form?

Morse code taps out 'ad astra per aspera' in the sounds of Earth, part of a sequence that walks through human technology from the first tools to trains, cars and jet aircraft.

The roar of which rocket's lift-off is among the record's sounds of Earth?

Saturn V, the Moon rocket, caps a run of transport sounds that climbs from a horse and cart through a train, a bus and a jet flyby to the launch that sent astronauts to the Moon.

The record's Swedish greeting comes from a speaker who gives which occupation?

A computer programmer is how she introduces herself, sending greetings from a little university town on the planet Earth; speakers were given no script, only a request to be brief.

In February 1998 Voyager 1 overtook which older NASA probe to become the most distant human-made object?

Pioneer 10, launched in 1972, led the way outward until the faster Voyager 1 passed it at about 69 times Earth's distance from the Sun; it carries the engraved plaque that paved the way for the Golden Record.

Which pianist's Well-Tempered Clavier recording is on the record?

Glenn Gould plays the Prelude and Fugue in C from Book 2 of the Well-Tempered Clavier; the Canadian pianist had given his last concert in 1964, at 31, to make music only in the studio.

The singer Kesarbai Kerkar represents the classical music of which country on the record?

India's track is Kerkar's 1953 recording of 'Jaat Kahan Ho' in raga Bhairavi; she died in September 1977, within weeks of the launches that carried her voice away from Earth.

Which 1978 book by the record's six makers tells the story of how it was put together?

Murmurs of Earth was written by the six people who made the record, Sagan among them; a 1992 edition came with a CD-ROM so that readers could hear the greetings as well as read them.

A 40th-anniversary vinyl box set of the Golden Record won which award in 2018?

A Grammy for best boxed or special limited edition package went to Ozma Records' set, the record's first release on vinyl; backers had pledged more than a million dollars on Kickstarter to see it made.

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

SoundCloud received NASA's upload of the greetings and the sounds of Earth in July 2015; two years later a crowdfunded box set put the whole record on vinyl for the first time.

Launched sixteen days after its twin, Voyager 1 still arrived first at which planet?

Jupiter saw Voyager 1 arrive in March 1979, four months ahead of Voyager 2, because the later launch had been sent on a shorter, faster path.

In which 1984 film does an alien come to Earth in answer to the invitation on Voyager 2's record?

Starman has aliens intercept the probe and send a scout to take up its welcome, only for the US government to shoot the craft down over Wisconsin; Jeff Bridges earned an Oscar nomination as the visitor.

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

Frank Drake, who devised the Drake equation in 1961, was the record's technical director; it was he and Sagan who settled on a phonograph record in place of another engraved plaque.

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

Pale Blue Dot shows Earth as a speck less than a pixel wide in a scattered sunbeam; Carl Sagan had pressed for this last look home for years before the camera was finally turned around.

In 2013 NASA announced that Voyager 1 had entered what?

Interstellar space began for the probe in August 2012, when it crossed the heliopause, the edge of the Sun's bubble of charged particles; it took NASA another year of data to be sure.

What metaphor did Carl Sagan use for launching the Golden Record?

A bottle thrown in an ocean was Sagan's image: the record will be played only if spacefaring civilisations exist, he wrote, but launching this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life here.

The first picture on the record, copied onto the cover so finders can check their decoding, shows which shape?

A circle was chosen so that anyone rebuilding the pictures can tell at once whether width and height are in the right proportion; a squashed circle means the settings are wrong.

One staged photograph on the record shows three people demonstrating which everyday acts?

Licking, eating and drinking share a single frame, placed among pictures of cooking and a dinner party; it was included to show the ways humans take food in, not just what the food looks like.

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

Sagan's son Nick spoke the English greeting, 'Hello from the children of planet Earth', at age six; he went on to write episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Voyager.

After aircraft and a rocket launch, the record's sounds of Earth turn intimate, beginning with which sound?

A kiss comes first, then a mother with her child and a recording of human brainwaves; the sequence's early sounds had been volcanoes, earthquakes and thunder.

The cover's unit of time comes from a transition of which element's atom, drawn there as two circles?

Hydrogen's atom flips between its two lowest states in 0.7 billionths of a second, a beat that is the same everywhere; the cover counts the record's 3.6-second rotation in those units.

Which giant radio telescope, used in 1974 to beam a message at the stars, appears among the record's pictures?

Arecibo's 1974 message was drawn up with two of the record's own makers, its technical director among them; the dish is pictured beside the Dutch array at Westerbork.

'Tchakrulo', a three-part choral song on the record, comes from which country?

Georgia's Tchakrulo, from the Kakheti region, sets two ornate solo voices over a choral drone and tells of preparing for battle; UNESCO cited it when honouring Georgian polyphony in 2001.