Master copy of the Voyager Golden Record, designed as an audio postcard for intelligent aliens, is up for auction

Practically 46 years in the past, NASA launched two small probes carrying a pair of gold-plated copper data that may quickly turn into the farthest human-made objects from Earth ever created. The probes — named Voyager 1 and a pair of — and their golden payloads are at present floating greater than 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) from Earth, and gaining distance daily. However this week, you possibly can add a grasp copy of these legendary data to your private vinyl assortment with out even leaving your house — and all you want is half one million {dollars}.

On July 27, Sotheby’s will public sale two double-sided reels of audio tape containing the grasp recordings of the Voyager Golden Document, plucked from the private assortment of movie star astronomer Carl Sagan and his spouse, Ann Druyan, each of whom helped with the document’s design and improvement in 1977.

Just like the gold-plated discs they begot, the grasp tapes comprise 27 items of music meant to encapsulate the world’s musical heritage, together with Beethoven, Chuck Berry, a Navajo chant and an Indian vocal raga. The tapes additionally embody 22 minutes of nature sounds and human voices talking in 59 languages, all of which had been designed as a form of audio postcard for any doubtlessly clever aliens which may in the future likelihood upon the Voyager probes. (The probes additionally comprise an audio participant with pictorial directions, and a star map exhibiting the placement of Earth.)

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“Bursting with the myriad sounds of life, Carl and I and our colleagues designed the Golden Document to be a testomony to the great thing about being alive on Earth,” Druyan, who was the artistic director of NASA’s Voyager Interstellar Message Venture that produced the data, mentioned in a Sotheby’s assertion. “We hoped it might seize the richness and variety of our world.”

Solely eight copies of the data had been ever made, together with the 2 gold-plated variations now using by way of interstellar house on the Voyager probes. Bidding for the grasp tapes begins at $300,000, and Sotheby’s expects them to fetch as much as $600,000. Bidding closes at 11:20 a.m. ET on July 27.

For these of us not seeking to spend half one million, NASA has supplied the complete observe record, and there are quite a few playlists of the document’s contents accessible on YouTube and music streaming platforms. Take a hear — and hope, for a second, that life in one other star system could in the future bump the identical jams.