golden record

"we cast this message into the cosmos... of the 200 billion stars in the milky way galaxy, some — perhaps many — may have inhabited planets and space faring civilizations. if one such civilization intercepts voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message: we are trying to survive our time so we may live into yours. we hope some day, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. this record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe."
president jimmy carter's official statement placed on the voyager spacecraft

why voyagers mission is ground (space?) braking and incredible mission you can read at NASA's (worth reading, very interesting stuff!).
but what i truly love is the golden record.
it's is a package of:
- 90 minute selection of music from planet earth
(pretty interesting selection...),
- greetings in 55 languages,
- sounds of earth,
- greetings from the secretary general of the UN,
- 115 images from the planet earth,
- an hour long recording of the brainwaves of ann druyan
(later she wrote: "i entered a laboratory at bellevue hospital in new york city and was hooked up to a computer that turned all the data from my brain and heart into sound. i had a one-hour mental itinerary of the information i wished to convey. i began by thinking about the history of earth and the life it sustains. to the best of my abilities i tried to think something of the history of ideas and human social organization. i thought about the predicament that our civilization finds itself in and about the violence and poverty that make this planet a hell for so many of its inhabitants. toward the end i permitted myself a personal statement of what it was like to fall in love.").
everything on golden LPs attached to spacecrafts now beyond the solar system waiting to be heard. selected by a committee chaired by carl sagan.


check out the golden record homepage for all sounds and pictures.