Thirty-eight years ago, the two Voyager spacecraft were sent out as proxies for the human race. Their aural archive—contained in two Golden Records—was catalogued and shot out into the “cosmic ocean” for someone (or something) to find.
Carl Sagan himself said publicly that it was more of a symbolic time capsule than an earnest attempt to connect to alien life. As such, it’s fitting that NASA has (at long last) released the Golden Record recordings through SoundCloud so the inhabitants of Earth can take a listen. The recordings had previously been available in bits and pieces online, but this is the first official, comprehensive collection intended for public consumption. The collection includes 55 languages, animal noises, music, Morse code, and so much more.
Both Voyagers are now in interstellar space, traveling farther than anything else originating on Earth in history. It’s amazing to listen back to what we considered to be the phonic story of humans some four decades ago, and to imagine what messages Voyager might be hearing now as they journey to the far off corners of the universe.