0:01

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production

0:03

of five Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,

0:11

and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh

0:13

Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck

0:15

Bryant. We're just batching it going

0:18

stagged today. First

0:21

stuff you should know. Yeah, our

0:23

our date's not here. We're

0:26

one another's date. Whether you like

0:28

it or not, I'm your date. Were you a

0:30

big school dance guy? I

0:34

was big at staying away from them. He

0:37

didn't go to those things. I went to

0:39

like one or two in eighth grade maybe, but I learned

0:41

my lesson early on. I got you no prom.

0:45

Yeah, I mean I went to prom and all that, but you know, like the

0:47

normal school dances and things like

0:49

that, like the under the Sea dance in I

0:52

didn't go to that all week. We only had two

0:54

We had homecoming and prom and that's

0:56

it. Oh well,

0:59

I think you know how Oh there was so little to do

1:01

that. There were tons of dances all the time. Sure,

1:05

man, just like in the movies.

1:08

It is just like in the movies when it's super cold

1:10

outside and you're just stuck inside, everybody's

1:12

just gotta dance. Oh, I guess we were just

1:15

outdoors in the the heat and humidity.

1:18

Right. You you had hiking, We had dances.

1:22

So what's this got to do with the Golden Records?

1:25

I don't know. This

1:28

is kind of cool. Very seventies. Yeah,

1:30

that's the thing, man, It doesn't get much more

1:33

seventies than than this. Actually,

1:35

this one and the other one that we're doing today

1:37

about as seventies as it gets.

1:39

But yeah, so we're talking about

1:42

Chuck. Two golden

1:44

records, two very special golden records,

1:46

identical in every way. Um.

1:49

They were pressed in a series of I'm not sure

1:51

how many because I once saw Carl Sagan

1:53

messing with one. So there

1:55

maybe three, there, maybe four, I don't know, but

1:58

there are at least two. And right

2:00

now, these very very special gold records

2:02

are somewhere outside of

2:05

our solar system. They

2:07

are aboard two space probes,

2:09

Voyager one and two, that were launched in um

2:14

and for the Voyager probes

2:16

are the first two human

2:18

made objects to travel beyond our

2:20

Solar system, which is pretty cool in and

2:22

of itself. Yeah, there are

2:25

billions of miles about thirteen billion

2:27

miles from Earth right now, going

2:30

very fast. Yeah, and

2:32

uh, you mentioned Carl Sagan. This was his sort

2:34

of baby, and the idea

2:37

is, hey, let's

2:39

launch something into outer space on

2:43

the well, I mean the sort

2:45

of reason was in case and another

2:48

civilization and extraterrestrial

2:50

being or life force could come across

2:53

it, this will be our greeting to them.

2:56

But when you read into it,

2:58

it's probably really unlikely that might

3:00

happen, and it it was sort of

3:02

a pr thing for NASA and also just

3:04

like made us feel better, I

3:06

think, yeah, and like you're

3:08

saying, it's very seventies and that it

3:10

was part of this kind of larger trend

3:13

in the Steffanies, mostly helmed

3:15

by Carl Sagan from what I could tell where

3:18

um, there

3:20

was this kind of push to get the world

3:23

to agree like becoming part

3:25

of some galactic you know, community

3:27

would be a good thing for humanity and start

3:30

thinking beyond the realms of Earth,

3:32

but at the same time thinking about

3:35

Earth and how we can take care of it. Was all kind

3:37

of intertwined and connected, and it all kind

3:39

of took shape in this kind of collective

3:42

human project of creating

3:45

messages and bottles and shooting them out

3:47

into space. And the wisdom of

3:49

that today is is questioned by some people

3:51

and me, Oh yeah, there are some people

3:53

who say, like, m, it's

3:56

not necessarily the best thing to do to start sending

3:58

messages into space before we have much

4:00

of a clue of what if anything is out

4:03

there. Just isn't the safest play

4:05

you can make. But at the time, and I saw a

4:07

quote from Frank Drake, who was heavily involved

4:09

in these projects. Um

4:12

he he said, you know, back then, everybody

4:14

was an optimist. Like there was nobody who wondered like

4:16

whether this was a smart or foolish thing to do.

4:18

Like, of course it was a good idea. Of course,

4:21

the whoever we contacted would be friendly,

4:23

so why would we not want to get in touch with them?

4:25

And that was kind of like this driving thing, like this optimism

4:28

and enthusiasm for reaching

4:30

out beyond earth and and and

4:32

kind of saying, hey, we're here and we

4:34

want everybody to take us seriously. Now,

4:37

that was a big seventies thing

4:39

and kind of the drive behind this

4:41

Golden Record thing. Yeah, and uh,

4:44

one thing is for sure, if you don't feel great

4:46

about it and other people don't feel great about it,

4:49

ts, it is far far

4:51

too late to have that concern. That is a

4:53

real argument about this, because yeah, like you're

4:55

saying they're billions of miles or saying would

4:57

put it billions and billions of miles

5:00

from Earth. I think something like thirteen

5:02

billion miles by now, traveling thirty

5:04

eight thousand miles per hour constantly.

5:07

So yeah, the the cat is

5:09

out of the bag, as it were, the probe is out of the

5:11

Solar System, so it is too

5:14

late. Um, but we can still poop poo it

5:16

in question whether it was foolish or not

5:18

in retrospect. That's fun. Yeah, it's fun

5:20

to poop on Carl Sagan's dream.

5:22

Hey, you know me, Man Sagan is one of

5:24

my heroes. He was a pretty

5:26

interesting cat. But um, these

5:28

Golden Records, like you said, they were kind of his baby.

5:31

Um. And we were talking about the Voyager

5:33

Probe and the Golden Records almost interchangeably.

5:36

The Golden Records are aboard

5:38

Voyager one and Voyager two, which have

5:41

shot out into the Solar System and will

5:43

be drifting in space unless

5:46

somebody grabs them and and says, what's

5:48

on here, you know, shakes it, the

5:50

records fall out, they'll just keep

5:52

going forever. And they actually

5:54

built these Golden Records so that

5:56

they'll last at least a billion

5:58

years by most as to vacuum

6:01

sealed in the further vacuum of

6:03

space, covered by an aluminum

6:05

cover that will protect it from cosmic

6:08

rays. UM, basically

6:10

indefinitely for all all, all

6:12

those of us alive are concerned. Yeah,

6:14

and there we keep saying golden records. They

6:16

are gold plated. They're not solid

6:18

gold like the dancers. They

6:20

are copper and

6:23

they are covered in gold. And they went with that

6:25

because that was just well

6:28

a few reasons. One is, obviously we

6:30

didn't have We had tape, but tape

6:32

would disintegrate eventually. We

6:34

did not have digital storage

6:37

like we do today today. If we wanted

6:39

to do this, we can include whatever we wanted.

6:41

Basically, UM,

6:43

we could include like all

6:45

of humanity, every recipe, every

6:48

song, every movie, every painting,

6:50

anything we wanted, every speech ever made. But

6:53

back then they figured a record was the

6:55

way to go, and this copper, gold

6:57

plated record was the thing that would

6:59

hold up the best. Yeah,

7:02

that's actually funny you bring that up, because I was thinking

7:04

of doing UM an episode on

7:06

DNA data storage where you can put

7:09

literally all of the world's information into

7:11

like encoded in d NA. UM.

7:14

This is like the opposite of that. I think

7:16

the onboard computers for Voyager.

7:19

Um Ruse helps us with this one. He said

7:21

that they had something like sixties

7:23

seven of

7:27

of of ram of of memory

7:29

aboard. Yeah, and you're

7:32

like, wow, we've really come a long

7:34

way. But think about how elegant that

7:36

code had to be to

7:38

drive these two space

7:41

probes that were not only like

7:43

these these were weren't just like hey, let's see

7:45

how far we can shoot this thing like skipping a rock

7:47

on a pond. Like these rocks had

7:50

cameras and equipment and

7:52

engines and all sorts of things aboard that

7:55

were that were run and operated by

7:57

these onboard computers that had sixties

7:59

seven kilobites RAM.

8:02

That is spectacularly impressive.

8:04

Yeah, it doesn't seem possible. Actually, but

8:07

they're well actually, I mean I was gonna say there

8:09

there were they're out there, but we're just

8:11

kind of taking it on faith. At the r the whole thing could

8:13

be one big lie. All right, So if

8:16

we're going to talk about Golden records, we need to talk

8:18

about what preceded the Golden records.

8:21

Um Dave calls it a rough draft,

8:23

and that's kind of a good way to put it. But in

8:25

the early seventies there were the Pioneer

8:27

ten and eleven missions. These

8:29

were two space probes launched Passi

8:32

asteroid Belt and their

8:34

gold was to take the first pictures

8:37

up close of Jupiter and Saturn. And

8:40

we can't communicate with these guys anymore, they're

8:42

way way out there. But Sagan

8:45

went to NASA and said, hey, what do you think

8:47

of sending a message in a bottle?

8:49

Basically like you mentioned a cosmic

8:52

message and NASA everyone

8:54

was smoking weed back then, including

8:57

Carl Sagan. Oh, I'm sure, uh

9:00

I bet that segan weed was good too. Yeah,

9:02

we talked about it. Remember in the Nuclear

9:04

winner Um episode that

9:06

he discovered weed. Actually, he

9:09

might not have been smoking weed at the time

9:11

of the Pioneer plaques, though, how do you

9:13

think was that pre Uh? I

9:15

think so. I think that came later when

9:17

he when he met Andrewy and oh

9:19

she was she was the influence. Huh I think

9:22

so? All right, Well, at any rate,

9:24

NASA said that's a cool idea, let's

9:26

do this. At the time, he

9:28

was married to his second wife, Linda

9:31

Salzman Sagan and the

9:33

aforementioned Frank Drake, who was one of his

9:36

old Cornell buddies, and

9:38

they came up with a plaque, an

9:41

inscripted plaque for this launch. Right.

9:44

So one of the very famous

9:46

things on this pioneer plaque was

9:49

a an etching of

9:51

a naked man and a naked woman. And

9:53

they're anatomically correct, um

9:56

and very impressive. Yeah super

9:59

um almost almost shame

10:02

like shamingly so yeah,

10:04

but um, they like

10:07

they really went to town and the guy didn't they

10:10

so um. A lot

10:12

of people like I don't know, a lot

10:14

of people actually couldn't find any any

10:16

contemporary articles on it. Um,

10:19

but there was this at least

10:21

enough of a public outcry that it's

10:23

worth noting against spending

10:27

taxpayer money on creating

10:29

what some people called space porn because

10:32

I guess in the two

10:34

and seventy three people had, you

10:36

know, a real aversion to line

10:40

drawings of naked men

10:42

and naked women put onto a plaque

10:44

and sent out into space, even though what they were trying

10:46

to say is, hey, these are what

10:48

humans look like. How

10:51

how about it? What do you think you like what you

10:53

see? Yeah? I mean Dave said

10:55

there was an uproar. I'm not sure if it was quite that bad,

10:57

but it was the thing enough

11:00

NASA. Um, well, we'll talk

11:02

about what happened later on on

11:04

their second attempt at naked bodies.

11:07

And well, even today I want to say one more thing, even

11:09

today on about those some

11:11

people are like, well, notably

11:14

either both white people or if

11:16

you look, the woman standing a little more demurely

11:19

than the man is. But these were not things

11:21

that Sagan and his friends were

11:23

thinking of at the time. They were like just trying

11:25

to say, this is what what humans look like

11:28

with the amount of space that we have.

11:30

Um. And it's worth pointing out too. If

11:33

you look at the picture of the man, he's holding

11:35

his hands up like, hey, how's it going. He's kind of waving

11:37

in like a friendly gesture. Sure, just

11:39

like, hey, I'm just standing here naked. How

11:42

you doing? Here's my penis? How

11:44

are you? Did you bring your

11:46

keys? This is the seventies and

11:49

this whole thing, And by the way, you should just look it up

11:52

if you if you've never seen this, it's kind of cool looking,

11:54

it's very seventies and it's um

11:56

you can get on a T shirt, which I ever saw

11:58

one of these out that's a very

12:01

super nerdy sort of in the no T shirt

12:03

to have I would think, yeah, for sure.

12:05

But the other three things, So you got the naked

12:08

bodies, and you've got friendly man waving

12:11

the ladies just standing there like I guess he's speaking

12:13

for me because it is the seventies. And

12:16

there are three other inscriptions that

12:18

are all attempts to basically

12:21

map where the Earth is

12:24

in the universe and in our solar system.

12:26

Uh, something that they would do later on the

12:29

Golden Records. That was an important part

12:31

of both of these things is to say, like,

12:33

not only who we are, but where are we

12:35

and this is you know, this

12:38

is where we are in the map, Yeah, which

12:40

is really hard to do. I

12:42

mean not just the idea that

12:44

this might not be found for tens

12:46

of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions

12:49

of years. So you're trying to communicate

12:51

in the future like that that nuclear semiotics

12:53

episodally, Yeah, but you're also

12:56

trying to communicate to somebody who,

12:58

um, it's not even human, it's never been

13:00

to Earth, has no idea what we're talking about. And

13:04

then you add the third layer of that

13:06

that when they approached NASA with

13:08

this plaque idea, NASA said, that's a really great

13:10

idea, let's do it, give it to us yesterday.

13:13

So they had to come up with it really quickly. And Frank Drake

13:15

is kind of the unsung hero and a lot of this

13:17

because he was a very intelligent

13:20

astronomer, one of the founders of ct UM,

13:24

the the guy who originated the Drake equation

13:26

which is a probabilistic um

13:29

formula for figuring out how

13:32

the probability of whether there's alien life or

13:34

not in the universe. Just an all around cool guy. But

13:36

he was not the science communicator like

13:38

second one. So Sagan gets a lot of credit um,

13:41

not necessarily because he was hogging it, but just because he

13:43

was the face or the mouthpiece of all these projects.

13:46

But Frank Drake came up with a lot of these ideas,

13:48

and he was the one who came up with this universal

13:52

key for for figuring

13:54

things like distance in time and getting that across

13:56

an alien civilization. And it was just

13:59

straight up genius in its simplicity

14:01

but also in its universality too.

14:04

Yeah, so it is interesting.

14:06

It is like the Semiotics episode in that thought

14:09

experiment of like how would I communicate with

14:11

something that I

14:13

mean it clearly? You just can't write out something

14:16

in English. So they went,

14:18

like you said, very smartly, with hydrogen

14:23

the most abundant element in the universe, and they're

14:25

like, if there's something that's gonna find this,

14:28

they're gonna know what hydrogen is. There

14:30

are a lot of assumptions made, but the assumption that they

14:32

would know what hydrogen hydrogen is was

14:35

a pretty good starting point. I think I

14:37

agreed that is a very good assumption. Most abundant

14:39

element in the universe. Like you said, if you are

14:41

traveling out in the universe, you have any kind of

14:43

grasp on chemistry, Um, you

14:45

know about hydrogen and you probably have studied

14:48

it pretty well. And the idea is if

14:50

you're a space faring civilization and

14:52

you've come across the space probe, you kind

14:54

of would have to be you probably at

14:57

least have that most basic understanding

14:59

of chemistry, which is presumed to be universal.

15:02

Right. Yeah, So the deal

15:04

with hydrogen atoms is very very

15:06

very rarely, Uh this happens,

15:08

but it does happen. The electron will start spinning

15:11

in a different direction and it will change energy

15:14

states. Uh. Pretty good band

15:16

name. This is known as hyperfine transition

15:19

math rock. I guess gotta be

15:22

maybe Prague, but

15:24

de yeah, math Rock for sure. And when this

15:26

happens, Uh, they release a pulse

15:29

of electromagnic magnetic

15:31

radiation. And the key here is that it

15:33

has a fixed wavelength and period. Right,

15:36

So, no matter where you are in the universe,

15:38

if you know about hydrogen, you know that

15:40

it takes point seven nanoseconds

15:43

for this transition to take place, and

15:45

that it releases a um

15:48

an energy, a little bolt of lightning

15:50

basically with the um

15:52

the wavelength of what

15:55

is it, one cimeter centimeter

15:58

wavelength? Right, said, this is just no

16:01

matter where you're in the universe, we assume hydrogen

16:04

has these properties. And so Frank Drake

16:06

came on, came along and thought, well,

16:08

you know what if that's true everywhere in the universe, and

16:10

we basically put a little symbol there

16:12

of hydrogen atom going into

16:14

another hydrogen atom showing the two different energy

16:17

states. They'll say, oh, hydrogen,

16:19

we know about that. Oh they're talking about the

16:21

transfer of the translation between

16:23

energy states, the hyperfine transition. Um,

16:26

we know all about that. So now we can

16:28

use those those numbers

16:30

that are going to be the same everywhere in the

16:33

universe as a key to

16:35

multiply and divide with and

16:37

um basically use that too

16:40

as a measure of time and distance.

16:42

That's going to be used in the rest of the schematic

16:44

that they put on the Pioneer plaque. Yeah.

16:47

The only other constant that they had in mind

16:49

was the fact that Sammy Hagar can't drive.

16:53

Wait, this would have been before that. I guess this should

16:56

have just had him deliver the plaque all over the

16:58

place, you know. Yeah, and that's wheat

17:00

uh ferrari or whatever that was. He

17:02

would drive at least thirty eight thousand miles

17:04

prior, if he got the chance, I'll tell you that much.

17:09

So, Um, they didn't have Sammy

17:11

Hagar available. I think in nineteen seventy two

17:13

he wasn't as well known as he is today obviously.

17:16

UM. So instead they put these things aboard

17:19

the Pioneer UM. And then in addition

17:21

to that, hydrogen uh,

17:24

the hydrogen um superfine hyperfine

17:26

transition, that's superfine, superfly.

17:30

Um. They created a diagram

17:33

of our place in the universe.

17:35

And here was another way that Frank Drake

17:38

shined. He said, Okay, what

17:40

would if you were an alien civilization, what

17:42

would you use to basically

17:45

as signposts around the universe, and

17:47

he figured out that pulsars would probably

17:50

be used in Pulsars are these

17:52

incredibly dense, incredibly

17:55

energetic collapse stars,

17:57

and they're usually about twelve or thirteen

18:00

miles in diameter, so roughly

18:02

the size of a city. Small,

18:04

you know, like a city, but

18:07

they have the mass many many, many times

18:10

our own sons very very dense,

18:12

and they spin really fast, and

18:14

as they spin, they release these bursts of energy,

18:17

and when you're looking at them, that burst

18:19

of energy gets directed at you. It is certain

18:21

rate, a certain repeating rate, basically

18:24

like a lighthouse. These are celestial

18:26

lighthouses. And because they

18:29

spin differently, each one has a different

18:31

frequency or a different rate of strobe

18:34

basically, and so you can

18:36

say, well, this pulsar has this rate. That's this

18:38

pulsar. I know that's over here. Let's

18:40

see where this other pulsar isn't Frank Drake

18:43

chose fourteen pulsars and basically

18:45

said, here's their distance from

18:47

our sun. Now if you if

18:49

you can find these pulsars, you can

18:52

use that as basically a map back to our

18:54

solar system. Yeah, and it's cool looking.

18:57

If you look at the picture, it's um,

18:59

it looks sort of like a icicle wheel with spokes,

19:01

except there's no uh tube

19:04

or tire, and the spokes are at varying

19:06

lengths. Yeah, it's something I'm missing.

19:08

The tires missing. Yeah, the

19:10

tires missing. I said that for sure, it

19:13

would be a very awkward bike to ride, would

19:16

because, like you said, they're varying lengths, so kind

19:18

of to be up in and down it

19:20

would not be comfortable chuck. Yeah. So the

19:23

the idea is that they

19:25

could see this, they would understand what it

19:27

means these assumptions again, and

19:29

they would compare their current

19:32

map of the pulsars. So

19:34

this enables a time stamp basically as

19:36

a secondary function because

19:38

all this stuff is changing. So if they

19:40

compared where they are whenever

19:43

this thing gets found, presumably to

19:45

where it was spoked out in nineteen

19:48

seventy two or whatever, then they

19:50

could determine how many millions of years

19:52

had passed since this thing was launched.

19:55

Yeah, it's it's pretty it's pretty amazing

19:57

stuff. I mean, like the distance from

19:59

the pulse are so the sun are spelled out in like binary

20:02

code that if you multiply that by the

20:04

wavelength of the hyperfine transition. You

20:06

get the actual distance, um, the

20:09

the frequency of those pulsars.

20:11

You can figure out which pulsar they're talking about

20:13

because you multiply that

20:15

binary code by the the

20:18

the time period of the hyperfine

20:20

transition. It was just like Frank

20:22

Drake came up with a universal way

20:25

to create a roadmap around

20:27

the universe, no matter where you are. It's

20:30

just mind blowing that they come up with, especially

20:32

on the fly too. Yeah, time stamped

20:34

roadmap even it's prettying, It really

20:37

is pretty amazing. So this is what they put aboard

20:39

the Pioneer plaque, naked

20:42

man and woman line drawing, um,

20:44

very impressive. And then the

20:47

one of the most ingenious two

20:50

dimensional maps anyone's ever devised

20:53

that could be used anywhere in the universe. Yeah,

20:55

and this was a little dry run for

20:58

what would what would next?

21:00

Which are the Golden records and maybe we

21:03

take a break now and then talk about those. We

21:05

take a break now, all right, let's

21:07

do it.

21:40

Okay, So Chuck, we took our break and we're

21:42

back and the

21:46

there was one other little kind of test run. Carl

21:48

Sagan got to work on something called

21:50

the Leggios Lagos.

21:54

I'm gonna go with Lagos Laser

21:56

Geodynamic Satellite UM,

21:58

which was a satellite, and he was like, is going to be kind

22:00

of coolest thing will be in orbit around Earth for

22:02

eight point four million years. I'm gonna leave

22:04

a little, a little, a little hello.

22:07

How do you do to any any civilization

22:09

who might find it millions of years from now? And

22:11

so this thing has an inscription of Pangaea

22:15

from I think two hundred and eighty

22:17

million, two hundred and sixty eight million years ago,

22:20

the the arrangement of the continents today

22:22

during human time, and he very ingeniously

22:25

indicates this by having that hand

22:27

Remember the man with his hand up

22:29

and gesture, friendly gesture. He

22:32

places that next to the current UM

22:34

arrangement, and then what the continents

22:36

will look like eight point four million years

22:38

from now when Lagos is going

22:41

to come back down to Earth. So this is

22:43

kind of like a just another cool little side

22:45

diversion that I think he did for fun. Yeah,

22:48

so he's he's got these little dry

22:50

runs going on. By

22:53

the time the voyager comes along,

22:55

he's like, you know what, UM, this is the

22:58

mid to late seventies. We need

23:00

to really get a better message out

23:02

there and let everyone know

23:05

who we are as humans. So

23:07

one thing we really want to do is put

23:10

pieces of culture music.

23:13

He got together with Timothy Ferris, who worked

23:15

for Rolling Stone magazine wrote

23:17

about music and space stuff for Rolling

23:20

Stone. He was part of the project,

23:22

and they said, yeah, music has definitely got to be in there.

23:25

We need to put some classical

23:27

music because, like, anyone

23:30

should be able to hear classical music and understand

23:32

the mathematical beauty that's going on there, even

23:35

even if like the they chose that because

23:37

even if aliens don't have ears

23:39

or any way to hear it, if they understand

23:41

math, they can kind of translate it and be like, wow,

23:44

this is pretty neat what these people did with this math.

23:46

Hopefully. Yeah, so

23:49

Frank Drake is on board again the unsung

23:51

genius of this stuff, and he's

23:53

the one that came up with the idea for the actual record,

23:56

like I said, which would last

23:58

much much longer. I think, would you say it

24:00

was like a million years or something billion?

24:04

A billion years is how long it will last. Yeah,

24:06

that's what they shot for. And here's

24:08

the other benefit of using a record um

24:11

is we play LPs standard

24:13

LPs at thirty three and a

24:15

third revolutions per minute. You don't

24:18

have to play him like that. You can slow him down and

24:20

you can pack a lot more stuff on there. That

24:23

accounts for about twenty three minutes. Aside,

24:26

they slowed him down to half

24:28

that sixteen and two thirds revolutions per

24:30

minute, and they did a lot of uh

24:33

crunching basically and tightening, and

24:35

they ended up getting about an hour's worth

24:38

per side on these golden records

24:40

of information. Yeah,

24:42

which is pretty impressive in and of itself.

24:45

They said, okay, great, we can fit a lot more sounds

24:47

on there than than just a store

24:50

a normal LP. Right. But

24:52

they they also figured out I'm not sure

24:54

if Frank Drake came up with this or if he um,

24:57

I think it was reported to him that this is possible,

24:59

but somebody found out that there was a company called

25:02

Colorado Video that had pioneered

25:04

away to take television

25:06

images and convert them

25:08

into audio, and

25:10

then you could take that audio and if you use

25:13

the right algorithm, you could convert

25:15

that audio back into a

25:18

visual signal television signal again.

25:21

Yeah, so they're like, this is great, we can

25:23

we we can actually not only put sounds

25:26

and music and words on these records,

25:28

we can embed images too, and

25:30

so they got with Colorado Video and Colorado

25:33

Video carry that out for them UM,

25:35

which is something we'll talk about, but one of the things

25:37

they were able to add was actual images.

25:40

So if you were an alien that

25:42

came across this UM these

25:44

this Golden record out there on voyage or Warner

25:46

Voyage or two, and you follow the instructions

25:48

which we'll talk about, you could create

25:52

recreate the pictures that are embedded

25:54

as sound in these records. The

25:57

mind blowing seventies stuff here. Total.

26:00

So you've got these records which, if

26:02

you you know, records don't have to be vinyl,

26:04

like I said, these are are copper covered in gold,

26:07

and if you look at and they just look like regular

26:09

LPs that are gold in color,

26:12

super shiny, very very shiny UM.

26:14

But then they have on top, they have this

26:17

cover that you said is made of aluminum

26:19

and it's it's basically round

26:22

and you know, the exact same size of the LP.

26:24

It's not like a square record

26:27

LP sleeve or whatever that we're used to. But

26:29

on this cover are all the instructions

26:32

for what these

26:35

people are going to be looking at and holding on.

26:37

These people, listen

26:40

to me, these persons in

26:42

my human centric mindset?

26:45

Here, what's they called the anthropocentric

26:48

I guess so, I mean whatever these beings

26:50

are when they get these records

26:52

on the cover is everything you need to know about

26:55

what it is and how to play it. Yeah,

26:59

So again they ran into the same problem

27:01

of how do you First

27:03

of all, we didn't even know that we could embed

27:07

video into audio signals

27:09

on a record. How are you

27:11

going to teach an alien to

27:14

to do the to recreate this and see

27:16

the pictures? They had to figure out how to do

27:18

this using binary code picture graphs.

27:21

UM. The easiest first step was

27:23

to include a cartridge and stylists.

27:25

So there's actually like a needle to play

27:27

the record with, But that's

27:29

not intuitive necessarily if you're an alien.

27:32

So they included a little drawing of

27:34

the record and where you should place the

27:36

needle and how to place the needle

27:39

though, oh is it already in place?

27:41

Okay? Alright,

27:43

so so why not make it as easy as possible

27:46

on the aliens? Okay? So they were saying, don't

27:48

touch anything, use it like this. That was one

27:51

they also UM had kind

27:53

of like a four step, step by step instructions

27:56

on the algorithm. That they

27:58

would need to use to you turn

28:01

the audio into video, and

28:03

it shows that it's supposed to create

28:06

UM five hundred and twelve interlaced

28:09

lines, kind of like an old

28:11

time TV, you know how that's like all lines,

28:14

just horizontal lines. So it's actually in a weave

28:16

of horizontal vertical. And then

28:18

they used a test picture. They on the

28:20

cover of the album. There's

28:22

a square with a circle in

28:24

it, and that's actually the first picture that will

28:26

come up if you're doing this right.

28:29

So it was kind of like saying, if you can

28:31

recreate this, you're on the right track. And

28:33

again it's ingenious. I can't make header tails

28:36

of it, but I'm guessing if you

28:38

and I were pilots for an

28:40

alien civilization, just

28:43

skirting around talking smack, we

28:45

came across Voyager one or two UM

28:48

and we found this thing, we would probably

28:50

take it back to our top minds. We wouldn't

28:52

try to figure it out ourselves, or we would, but we

28:54

wouldn't get anywhere. But you would

28:57

bet that if we put you know, our best

28:59

side and to so on this problem,

29:02

they could probably decipher this and

29:04

figure it out. Yeah,

29:06

I think so. I hope so,

29:09

because if not it's all for naught. Well,

29:11

I mean, you just gotta take your best stab at it. And

29:13

and this is a pretty good stab I did.

29:15

Well. I did see a guy on Boing Boing

29:17

um back in I think two thousand, I'm

29:20

not sure, not too long ago. Um,

29:23

he tried it and was able to successfully

29:25

do it following the instructions on that. So

29:27

at least one person figured it out. Well,

29:31

that's good. Unless he was just this

29:33

super intelligent alien in human

29:35

uh than a human skin sack, then then

29:38

that's a good try. So the

29:40

other thing it included on the cover

29:42

was that um, same thing from the Pioneer

29:44

plaque, that that pulsar map, because

29:47

he was like, we already figured this out, so this is great.

29:49

There's no need to change this thing.

29:51

Just throw that on there as well. And

29:54

then there are these four inscriptions,

29:57

uh, basically teaching

29:59

them how to decipher all these

30:02

images and uh

30:05

using binary symbols again um

30:07

yeah, and if that algorithm, yeah,

30:09

and if they get to that circle, which

30:12

they pointed out, like you know,

30:14

how that they know if it's not backwards or something. I

30:17

I thought of that too, But I also saw pointed out

30:19

that they chose a circle specifically

30:21

because it shows that that

30:23

you're you have the correct horizontal and

30:25

vertical aspect. I guess, I

30:27

guess. So, yeah, it's like the old days

30:30

when you would uh adjust your

30:32

your horizontal and vertical hold. Yes,

30:35

exactly exactly. So the circle.

30:37

If it looks like that circle isn't flatter

30:40

or thinner or whatever, you're you've got the right

30:42

vertical and horizontal aspect. I think

30:44

that's why they chose that circle. And I have

30:46

to say, Chuck, I feel really uncomfortable

30:49

here because it's pretty tough to stump both

30:51

of us right at the same time, and

30:53

so it's kind of bugged me researching

30:56

this whole this whole um episode.

30:59

And I think part of it is is that Frank

31:03

Drake and Andrewian and

31:05

Tim Ferris and Carl

31:07

Sagan made this stuff up.

31:10

Is it Tim Farriss? Yeah, it is Tim Fairs.

31:12

So Timothy Ferris, not Tim Ferris before our

31:14

work Week guy, but Timothy

31:16

Ferris. But that they made the stuff

31:18

up in the hopes that an alien

31:20

civilization will will understand it.

31:23

And a lot of it does make sense, but it's not

31:25

necessarily tuitive. But it's also not necessarily

31:27

something that I think you could go to school

31:29

and learn. You just kind of have

31:31

to be vibe and on what this small group

31:33

of people came up in this ad hoc way

31:36

as a message on behalf of humanity

31:38

out to any alien civilization

31:40

that found it, which makes me feel a lot better about

31:43

failing to fully understand every

31:45

aspect of it. Yeah, I totally

31:47

agree. Um, there is one final piece

31:50

before week is Everyone's like, yeah, but what's

31:52

on there? We're not going to

31:54

tell you the last

31:56

little sort of nerdy pieces. They wanted to time

31:59

stamp this one too on

32:01

the cover, so they included on

32:03

the surface of the thing a little tiny piece of

32:06

uranium two thirty eight. Yeah, this is

32:08

cool. Yeah, it's a radioactive isotope

32:10

that has a half life of four and a half billion years,

32:13

and it decays at a steady rate, which

32:15

is perfect because if you found

32:17

this thing, you know, millions

32:19

or billions of years later, they would be

32:21

able to analyze that little patch of uranium

32:24

and pinpoint exactly when this thing

32:26

was launched. And if all that

32:28

makes sense and you weren't confused by

32:30

it, go listen to our Carbon fourteen episode

32:32

so you can become confused by it. That's right,

32:35

Okay, So can we talk about what was on this thing? No,

32:40

we have to, and of course we shouldn't. We want

32:42

to, but we had to build it up, you know, and get it

32:44

to the point where everyone understood the technical

32:46

difficulty that was involved

32:49

in getting these things. Because today

32:51

it's like I want to a c D. Actually

32:53

it's hard to make a CD today. Let's say it

32:55

was ten years ago, fifteen years ago, you

32:57

want to make a CD, easy as poe. Right.

33:01

This was all just making stuff up

33:03

at the time to put on records.

33:05

And then in addition to that, they had to choose

33:08

this stuff from all of the things you could possibly

33:11

choose from humanity to kind

33:13

of give as clear and round

33:15

and in deep and wide

33:17

a picture of what makes humans

33:20

human and what makes earth earth

33:22

um and what demonstrates our understanding

33:25

of all this to somebody who's never met

33:27

us before. That is a really big task.

33:29

And that's what they were facing when they when they

33:32

curated this collection. Yeah, because

33:34

like we said, it's not like you have, um an

33:36

infinite amount of images to

33:38

stuff on there. They basically said, all

33:40

right, you got space for I

33:43

saw a hundred and sixteen images, um,

33:46

So go at it. What one

33:48

hundred and sixteen things will best crystallize

33:51

what planet Earth and humanity is all about.

33:54

Right, So the first thing they did was

33:57

um some like astronomical

33:59

images, UM, scientific

34:02

diagrams and stuff like that that

34:04

charge where we are in the Solar system, to basically

34:06

say, here's where we are, Here's

34:08

what our masses, here's how

34:11

far the planets are from the

34:13

Sun, and just kind of a broad overview

34:15

of what our solar system is. Right.

34:17

Pretty good place to start, it is, and

34:20

then it kind of drills down a little more into

34:22

biology and our understanding of um

34:25

nature and cells and cell division,

34:28

and then that kind of nicely transitions

34:31

to human biology, so

34:34

uh, cell division into a fetus. And then

34:36

they apparently had a picture

34:38

of a naked man and woman. Again couldn't

34:40

get enough of that stuff. UM

34:43

and NESA said, no, no, sickos,

34:46

We'll take this man and woman picture, but we're

34:48

going to black them out so that

34:50

it's just a filled in silhouette like

34:52

what were those called the shadow portrait?

34:55

When you were in like elementary school, I

34:58

don't know, you know I'm talking about, so like you

35:00

would they would shine a light on you

35:02

and then they would basically cut your

35:05

shadow out in construction paper and then you would

35:07

have a filled in black silhouette of yourself

35:09

from from profile. Yeah, basically

35:13

like that, but this is a full,

35:16

full frontal, blacked out

35:18

silhouette of a man and a woman. But said

35:22

it does. But NASA said, we're not going to totally

35:24

defeat the purpose that feed us from the last

35:26

slide. We're gonna put that in the center of

35:28

the woman's abdomen, and then

35:30

that will justify our prudency.

35:33

I guess, so, uh, I

35:35

sort of get it, but it's just dumb. I mean show. I

35:38

mean they weren't like, hey, put Khaki's in a

35:40

blazer on the guy, like,

35:43

you gotta show the parts, man, you gotta show the naked

35:45

parts and what we look like. Get some doctors

35:47

on there. Almost said doctors, it's

35:49

funny. So um.

35:52

They also showed a woman breastfeeding, which

35:54

I thought was really great considering that

35:56

they blacked out the nudity otherwise

35:59

um, and then they show like human

36:02

development, kids in school, people

36:04

eating. There's one slide of a person

36:07

person licking and ice cream cone, somebody eating a sandwich,

36:10

and then somebody drinking a glass of water all in one

36:12

image. They really crammed a lot of info into

36:14

that, UM,

36:16

things like our agriculture

36:19

and growing food and then um

36:23

nature also you want because it wasn't

36:25

all just about humans but itself

36:28

as well. You gotta have the birds

36:30

and the flowers and the fishies, you gotta have insects,

36:33

you gotta have the Great Barrier, reef and

36:35

mountain ranges. Um.

36:38

It showed humans doing things

36:40

like gymnastics. Imagine, which was it

36:43

might be a very confusing thing to see. Yeah,

36:45

well the first picture they submitted was naked

36:48

gymnastics and

36:50

NASSA said, go get us another one. Is there any other

36:52

kind? As

36:55

a matter of fact, there is? Uh. And then they

36:57

go to art of course, UM pictures

36:59

of music school instruments, UM

37:03

paintings, the Great Wall of China, skyscrapers,

37:05

trains, cars, airplanes, rockets.

37:09

They did not put stuff like

37:11

religion or disease or crime

37:14

or war or poverty. They don't

37:16

want it to be a bummer. They kind of

37:18

just wanted to show like the achievements of humanity.

37:21

I think, have you have

37:23

you seen? Did you look at all these images? I

37:25

didn't look at all of them. I looked at a lot of them, and I

37:27

listened to a lot of this stuff. So you

37:30

me got me this UM this set

37:32

of like like Anniversary said, I think

37:34

there was a kickstarter a couple of years back where

37:36

people wanted to like reissue it on records.

37:39

So you've got me the set and it comes with like the liner

37:41

notes are just amazing and everything. And

37:44

you go through and you look at um

37:46

the pictures and they're like

37:49

I find the entire set combined

37:52

to be rather unsettling, you

37:55

know, very like seventies

37:58

educational film way. They

38:00

don't have like a

38:03

coherent look

38:05

to them, which I understand, like

38:08

there's not a coherent look to to

38:10

the world or to Earth, but

38:12

there's just the the There was no

38:15

unifying design or anything

38:17

like that. It was just this random assembly of

38:20

pictures and D diagrams. Some were

38:22

black and white, some are blacked out, some are

38:24

just silhouettes, some are full color. It's

38:27

almost like jarring in the way of like

38:29

um, like that that book

38:32

Wisconsin Death Trip that I'm always talking about

38:35

is like what that is in text, This

38:37

almost is in pictures, and that's

38:39

what we sent out there. It's for some reason,

38:41

it just stirs something in me that I can't quite put

38:43

my finger on. But it's not fully pleasant, you

38:45

know. Yeah, I had the same reaction. Um, it

38:48

was, well, you know what it would look like. It looked

38:50

like a set of images curated

38:52

by a bunch of scientists. It

38:54

did as a Marfa scientists on grass.

38:57

Yeah, like that would it have killed

38:59

them to get the lead that it's in there? Or some sort

39:01

of designer you

39:03

know. That's that's what I'm saying that andrew Ian was

39:06

like an artist, but

39:08

she was I think a writer. I think Siggen's

39:11

previous wife who I think they

39:13

became separated during this process. I

39:16

believe she was a visual artist, so

39:18

maybe her not being part of that project

39:20

is that kind of unsettling

39:23

aspect, you know what I'm saying, Like she she would

39:25

have brought that there and didn't. Who

39:27

knows? Who chuck actually?

39:29

Hold on, I've I've identified it. Have

39:31

you ever heard of you know? Scarfolk Council?

39:34

Nope, you do. It's like this

39:37

seventies British um

39:39

P s A s and educational

39:41

films, but they're all really dark and evil.

39:45

You've seen it before, I've shown it to you. It's almost

39:47

like Scarfolk council chose

39:50

the pictures that are

39:52

that are in this all right, you

39:56

should You'll be like, as a matter of fact, Josh,

39:58

I think you've just put your finger on it, all

40:01

right. So that side one, Side A,

40:03

as it were, as all these images um

40:06

cut into this, into the grooves of this thing

40:09

ingenious. And it's also they

40:11

have their own sounds, so like if you're just sitting

40:13

there listening to the record, these pictures

40:15

have their own sound that lasts a few seconds each,

40:18

but if you run it through the algorithm, those sounds are translated

40:20

into images. It's it's cool, it's neat

40:22

that they have their own sound. You know, oh totally, what's

40:24

gonna make some kind of sound exactly.

40:27

So Side B, if you flip it over,

40:30

uh, it's the audio portion.

40:33

And so this is where we get, um

40:36

get a little more I don't know about more interesting,

40:38

but this is it's definitely seventies

40:41

and sort of spacey when you listen to some of

40:44

this stuff. The

40:46

I would say, the entirety of

40:49

the sound side is super

40:51

seventies spacey, like real trippy

40:55

and cosmic and mellow. Even the

40:57

stuff that's like a you know, traditional folk

41:00

music that they included. It's all comes

41:02

from a real like super

41:05

marijuana e place.

41:08

Marijuana. Yeah, stony,

41:11

sure, stony, that's what the kids call it, but

41:14

more like they just took marijuana and pressed

41:16

it into music. Well.

41:20

The first thing is an audio recording of

41:22

just just a sort of a hey, how you doing

41:25

this? This is what you're about to listen to, recorded

41:28

by Kurt Waldheim, the

41:31

Austrian Secretary General of the u N at

41:33

the time. He starts out with with U and

41:38

he said this, Uh, we step out

41:40

of our solar system into the universe,

41:42

seeking only peace and friendship,

41:45

to teach if we are called upon to be taught,

41:47

if we are fortunate. I think those are

41:49

beautiful words. It's very cool. Jimmy Carter

41:52

included a printed copy.

41:55

For some reason, he didn't speak it. I'm not sure

41:57

why. Maybe they didn't have He

42:00

famously hated his voice. Did

42:02

he really? Okay?

42:06

Uh? Do you want to read that? And that's kind of long. We

42:08

should just say it's pretty great as well. It

42:10

is great, and he basically says, we

42:12

are working on our own problems here on Earth,

42:15

but we want to join this cosmic

42:17

community one day, and this

42:19

is our first entree. Into that this is us

42:21

saying hello, right uh, and

42:23

then speaking of saying hello, the next thing that you're

42:26

going to hear are fifty

42:28

five greetings and fifty

42:30

five languages. And

42:32

the kind of bummer of this here is it's not

42:35

like they were able because they had to do this

42:37

pretty pretty fast, you know, Like you said, NASA didn't

42:39

him a lot of time, so they couldn't

42:41

necessarily go to all these countries and record

42:44

people in person. So they got

42:46

a lot of people who spoke these languages,

42:48

but they weren't necessarily natives

42:50

of that language, and

42:52

they couldn't find all the languages. So

42:55

I think one that a lot of people point to

42:57

that was unfortunately left out with Swahili,

43:00

so there's no message from someone in Swahili

43:02

on it. But they did do a lot of languages

43:04

considering what they were dealing with, and I

43:06

think originally too, they presumed

43:08

they would just go to the u n and get

43:10

each ambassador from each country there to

43:13

record a message in their native

43:15

language. But somebody pointed out

43:17

that almost all the ambassadors there at the time

43:19

were men, and Sagan and his

43:21

crew definitely wanted a pretty

43:23

even mix of men and women, so

43:26

they had to kind of on the fly figure out

43:29

we need to get some Cornell faculty to

43:31

get in on this, and they managed to

43:33

pull out what was it, fifty five languages, yeah,

43:35

fifty five and some of these they didn't

43:37

tell people what to say to some sort of greeting and

43:40

however you would want to greet people in your language,

43:42

and some of these are pretty fun. Um.

43:45

The Amoy one, which is a part

43:47

of the Men dialects this, friends

43:49

of space, how are you all? Have

43:52

you? Have you eaten yet? Come visit

43:54

us if you have time. If you

43:56

have time, we don't want to put

43:58

you out by making you feel obligated.

44:01

The Zulu said, we greet you great

44:03

ones. We wish you longevity.

44:05

Yeah, they're kind of you know,

44:08

we're going to assume that you can wipe us all out,

44:10

so I'm just gonna throw some compliments

44:12

out at you. That's like one step away from

44:15

Eldritch God's um.

44:17

Persian Persian. The Persian wan

44:19

was pretty good. Hello to the residents of the

44:22

for skies. And

44:24

the Polish one says, welcome creatures

44:26

beyond our world. That's

44:28

scary, but I like it. And

44:30

like you said, the Englishman was what now.

44:35

The English one was actually Carl Sagan and Linda

44:37

Saltzman, Sagan's son Nick.

44:40

It's very cute. He's six years old and

44:42

improvised this hello

44:44

from the children of planet Earth. Boo,

44:47

yeah, very nice. It

44:49

was very nice. So um, that was

44:51

just kind of like a bunch of different greetings

44:54

saying hello, Hey. It comes and goes pretty quick,

44:56

even though there's fifty five entries, none

44:59

of them particularly long. But then

45:01

after that they started to get a little more

45:03

far out, and I say, we

45:06

take a break and then come back. You want to, let's

45:08

do it,

45:41

alright, chuck. So the big cliffhanger was

45:43

whether this was actually going to be far out or

45:46

not if I was right. And it turns

45:48

out I was right. This stuff gets

45:50

far out pretty quick, and I think there's

45:53

no way we can't play one of the things.

45:56

You got to know what I'm talking about. I

45:59

think so music of the Spheres. No,

46:02

okay, the whale

46:04

whale song, no, the

46:06

sound essay, which part?

46:10

All right, Well, let's just tell everyone quickly he

46:13

did include a whale song. This was Sagan's

46:15

idea. He thought that you know,

46:17

they people of the future might not even or

46:20

not people of the future. Here we go again. Whatever

46:22

these things are might not communicate in a language.

46:25

It maybe more like a whale song, so let's throw

46:27

one of those on their plus, whale songs are nice.

46:31

Then they did this uh

46:33

sound essay that it

46:36

was an audio way. It

46:38

was an audio journey from

46:41

evolution on well,

46:43

first thing, A good way to say it, it is,

46:45

Yeah, for sure. They included um,

46:49

yeah, it's kind of like a trip

46:51

through time and even before human or

46:53

the evolution of life. It's supposed

46:55

to kind of capture the early Earth. There's

46:58

like lightning and thunder

47:00

and rain. Um, there's mud

47:02

pots bubbling um,

47:04

volcanoes, earthquakes, all that stuff

47:07

to just basically say like this is how Earth kind

47:09

of came together and then animals of course.

47:11

Yeah, it's it's pretty cool if you think about

47:13

it. You know, to try to

47:16

do an auditory progression

47:19

of of the evolution of Earth. So yeah,

47:21

then life comes along crickets and

47:23

birds and elephants and

47:25

then humans and this is what I wanted to put.

47:29

So it's

47:32

I guess Timothy Ferris was kind of in

47:35

charge of picking out the music or was a

47:37

big part of it or the sound

47:39

essay and Andrewian did too. I

47:41

think they worked together, and notably they were

47:44

actually engaged at the time, at least

47:46

at the beginning of this project. Timothy

47:48

Ferris and Rurian were um,

47:51

and what's

47:53

her what's her last name? I

47:58

like to add a little mustard too, all right, so

48:01

um, Timothy and An we're working together

48:03

on this and for humanity. When humanity

48:05

finally makes an appearance in the sound essay,

48:08

right, it's one

48:10

of the most bizarre presentations of humanity

48:14

that they could have come up, like what

48:17

they were thinking. I don't either,

48:19

It doesn't make any sense. So there's

48:22

a wind, sweat, plane, footsteps,

48:25

and then laughter. Dave

48:27

calls its sinister laughter, and you could definitely

48:29

take it that way, but I think it can also be weird

48:32

hearty laughter. But it's odd either way,

48:35

and especially when you put these elements together,

48:37

it's particularly odd. So I feel

48:39

like we really need to play it's fairly short, right,

48:41

yeah, yeah, you failed to mention the heartbeat

48:43

too, which is kind of what makes it all super creepy

48:45

as well. Okay, so here it is. This

48:48

is where humans come along in the sound essay.

49:19

O god, wow, Yeah,

49:22

I mean that is what they decided to like

49:24

this is this is what humans do.

49:27

They walk around with their hearts beating as

49:29

loud as they can, laugh on when

49:32

sweat planes, where their footsteps

49:34

echo behind them. That's the human experience

49:36

for sure. Yeah, so this sound essay

49:39

continues of course once humans come

49:41

along. They got through human evolution

49:43

and fire and tools

49:46

and jobs like the sounds of blacksmith

49:48

ng and cheaperding and sawing things,

49:51

and then tractors and ships and

49:53

cars and planes. Uh,

49:56

it's all again. It just seems like a very

49:58

seventies uh bong

50:00

water sort of experiment, right.

50:02

Um, I don't think we mentioned the music of

50:04

the spheres. I teased it. Oh yeah,

50:07

there's also that this is a twelve

50:09

minute recording technically

50:11

it's a song, but it's based on the

50:14

theories of the great

50:16

mathematician Kepler, Johannes Kepler,

50:19

where they ascribed a musical tone to

50:21

each one of the planets and

50:25

uh he worked with Bell Labs, the

50:27

computer lab and reproduce the

50:29

sound of the planets in a hundred year

50:31

orbit around the Sun. Yeah,

50:33

and so it is

50:35

crazy. I think that's Um, that's like

50:37

part one of the whole sound essay. The music of

50:40

the spheres, and Kepler was

50:42

working off of Pythagoras theories

50:44

actually, and the whole thing is based on this idea that

50:46

an object moving through space tends to

50:48

make a sound, whether it's like the wishing of wind

50:51

or humming or whatever, an

50:53

object moving will make some sort of

50:55

sound. And the planets are objects,

50:57

and they're really really big objects, so they

51:00

make huge sounds um

51:02

And the theory was that the reason we

51:05

can't hear these sounds is because we have no frame

51:07

of reference for what things sound

51:09

like without them. So our concept

51:11

of silence is actually filled with the sounds

51:13

of the planets, including Earth, moving through

51:16

space. We just don't hear it

51:18

because we we are so attuned to it.

51:20

And that each of these planets, because they move at

51:22

a different rate, there are different sizes, of different

51:25

mass and velocities and everything, that

51:27

they'll make their own unique sound, and

51:29

that when you put all these sounds together of

51:32

the bodies in the Solar System to

51:34

actually harmonize. And so Kepler

51:36

took it a step further and actually figured

51:38

out what each what note

51:41

each celestial body would make. And

51:43

then Sagan and his crew got together with Bell

51:45

labs like you were saying, and produce that as

51:47

the Music of the Spheres, which is

51:50

I mean, this is the kind of stuff they were doing with

51:53

just a few months to create

51:55

the Voyager Plaque Project in

51:57

their entirety, or the Voyager Golden

51:59

Record in their entirety. Yeah, And if you

52:01

go to look up Music of the Spheres on YouTube

52:04

or something, it's it's there's a lot of stuff out there

52:06

called Music of the Spheres UM,

52:08

so it's kind of tough to find the

52:11

real one even

52:13

if you put in like Kepler, there are some

52:16

wrong stuff out there that is not the

52:19

real Music of the Spheres, but you can find it if

52:21

you're you know, if you spending a time. Yeah,

52:23

there's an actual NASA UM NASA

52:25

Jet Propulsion Lab has a site

52:28

um for dedicated to Voyager

52:31

Voyager dot JPL dot NASA dot

52:33

gov, and they have all sorts of

52:35

stuff about not just the Golden Record, but the entire

52:37

Voyager one and two projects, which is pretty

52:39

cool in and of itself. But they have everything

52:42

that's on the Golden Record, including the

52:44

UM, the sound essay, and

52:47

the different components of the sound essay, and the Music of

52:49

the Spheres is on there. It's pretty cool stuff,

52:51

even though it's completely unfounded

52:53

and whacked out. It's neat that they kind of

52:55

nodded to this tradition by including

52:58

it on there. Oh totally, And that's exactly

53:00

where you should go. So just be warned

53:02

if you go to YouTube, you're you're gonna get a lot of like ya

53:05

and stuff like that, because Music of the

53:07

Spheres is just a very trippy title

53:09

for a song. Hey, worst things could

53:12

happen to you today and stumbling

53:14

across a nice Anna track that you

53:16

weren't expecting to listen to. Oh

53:19

boy, I actually had one of her CDs back

53:21

in the day. Oh dude, I had that thing was

53:23

on repeat, the one with

53:28

that's the one. So uh.

53:31

The last part of the sound essay is called life Signs,

53:33

and this is where it really gets out there,

53:35

as if it's not out there enough already.

53:38

But and drew In said, here's

53:41

what I want to do. I want to record

53:43

my brain activity using

53:45

an e G and

53:47

then they may be able to reverse

53:49

engineer this thing and actually

53:52

read my brain thoughts

53:55

in the future. And not only that,

53:57

but um, I'm falling

53:59

in love with Carl Sagan and he's

54:01

throwing that love right back in my way. So

54:04

my, my, e g. My brain

54:06

waves that I'm sending out there are

54:09

going to be soaked with love, and

54:11

that's just like the most groovy thing that

54:13

we can do. It is pretty

54:15

groovy if you think about it. And they got married,

54:18

Yeah, they got married, they had some kids, um,

54:21

and they were together until he died

54:24

in his sixties. I think in two

54:26

or three. I believe that's right. So

54:29

um, I think I did. I haven't heard it yet,

54:31

but I heard Radio Lab did a pretty good episode about

54:34

that, about the Life Signs. Yeah,

54:36

I'm sure it's great. Those guys are awesome. Oh

54:38

yeah, of course. So um.

54:42

The hardest thing, though, Chuck, was

54:45

coming up with music itself

54:47

that was representative

54:50

of the whole world. They didn't want it to just be

54:52

Western music. For Western music, they

54:54

chose mostly Beethoven and Bach again

54:57

because like you said, uh, and even

54:59

a an event civilization that

55:01

didn't have ears or didn't hear um

55:04

didn't sense things like that. Uh,

55:06

they would still be able to analyze it and be impressed

55:09

by it, see the beauty and magic in it.

55:11

But they also chose um

55:14

some rhythm and blues as

55:16

part of the Western music that they included

55:18

too. Yeah, you have to. I mean there was, um

55:21

besides boch In, Beethoven, there's other classical

55:23

pieces on there. But you got to represent

55:26

humanity. Um, you

55:28

cannot represent humanity without the contribution

55:31

of African American music, which was

55:34

basically the birth of all popular music

55:36

with blues, jazz and then rock and roll. So

55:39

they thought Chuck Berry Johnny be Good

55:41

got to throw that up there. Dark

55:44

was the Night by Blind Willie Johnson, very

55:46

kind of one of those early kind

55:48

of creepy sounding blues jams. Um

55:51

melancholy Blues by Louis Armstrong and

55:53

his Hot seven, and I

55:55

thought it was funny. Dave included this too. I actually

55:58

remember this. Saturday Night Live had a joke way back

56:00

when, because this was all over the news, um,

56:02

where they said the space aliens message back would

56:04

be sydmore Chuck Berry, Right,

56:07

it was Steve Martin doing his psychic

56:09

character Kokua Yea, who

56:11

was receiving telepathic messages

56:13

from the aliens who had

56:15

intercepted the voyage or probes. Uh.

56:18

You would think the Beatles would be a natch,

56:20

and they were, except that it didn't

56:23

work out. Um. All four of the Beatles said, yeah,

56:25

we'd love to be on. Um, there were copyright

56:27

issues, so they did not make the cut. So

56:31

I read an article by Timothy Ferris

56:33

saying that that was an urban legend that they

56:35

had never thought

56:37

to or that they had never tried to. Yeah, that

56:40

they hadn't included the Beatles. And apparently

56:42

part of the urban legend is that the Beatles song

56:44

they were trying to get was Here Comes the Sun. And

56:47

he's like, that would have been funny for a very short

56:49

while. And then but he said that they

56:51

that that was interesting.

56:54

That's disappointing because I would think that would be um,

56:58

I would think that would be worthy of consider duration Chuck

57:01

Berry and Bach's your choices,

57:03

Chuck, Bob, Dylan they thought about,

57:05

apparently, but they were like, I don't

57:07

know, Dylan might just they just might be wondering what

57:09

the heck he's talking about. That smells

57:11

like an urban legend too, do you think?

57:14

Yeah? And um, Timothy Ferrist didn't address

57:17

it one way or the other, but but you

57:19

just started cynical about that. I it

57:21

just smells like when you know what I mean, I

57:23

think it's I think it smell it. It

57:26

smells real to me smells holding.

57:28

I'm a big Dylan fan though, no,

57:32

it's a legend. Uh.

57:34

They also had music of the world. They

57:36

had a didgeri do of course, some

57:39

pan flute action, a little

57:41

Indian raffie, a little Indian raga, navajo

57:43

chant, little mariachi, jams, Azerbaijani

57:47

bagpipes, amazing. Yeah,

57:50

what else? Music from all over the world basically,

57:53

which is you know what, which is what you gotta do. It

57:56

is strange though that they I mean, Johnny

57:59

be Good was the pop music they put on

58:01

there. Yeah, and again this tim

58:03

Timothy Ferris recollection of

58:06

it was that um that there

58:08

was some dissent about, including Chuck

58:10

Berry. I think that it was to adolescent,

58:13

is what one of the people said, And

58:15

Carl Sagan was like, well, there's a lot of adolescents

58:18

that live on planet Earth, so it actually is pretty

58:20

representative. So it ended

58:22

up on there. But yeah, it is surprising

58:24

that, say, like the Beatles or something, especially

58:26

from you know, this handful of potheads

58:28

working on the project. You'd think for sure

58:31

that they would have chosen something like that, but they didn't.

58:33

They yes,

58:35

tune on their right, they

58:38

put twelve in its entiretyis,

58:44

which is good, but it got way better when Phil

58:46

Collins took over. We've

58:49

talked about this, I know so

58:52

um one of the things that Carl Sagan

58:54

did after this project. Oh and by the

58:56

way, that laughter, there's apparently

58:59

a big mystery about whose laughter it was

59:01

on that sound essay when Humanity

59:03

comes in and is walking with the heartbeat going, and

59:06

Um, as Atlantic writer, tried

59:08

very hard to get to the bottom of it, and she

59:11

believed that she had that. She finally got in touch

59:13

with Sasha Sagan Um, Carl

59:15

Sagan's daughter, Carl and Ann's daughter,

59:18

who said, I talked to my mom and she said

59:20

that, Um, that that was my father's

59:23

laughter, and it was confirmed

59:25

with Anne. But then Timothy Ferris

59:27

through a rent in the work because he was there too, and he's

59:29

like, look, I knew Carl Sagan very

59:31

well and I heard his laugh plenty of times and it didn't

59:33

sound anything like that. So

59:36

they're kind of like, where is this gonna go with it being Carl

59:38

Sagan's because I think she had spent years

59:40

trying to figure this out, and

59:42

I was really happy when she did. And then was

59:45

really Chris fallen when it turns out that

59:47

that wasn't the case, and that was um Adrian

59:50

la France, who spent

59:52

years trying to figure that mystery out. Well,

59:54

Sagan was a scientist, he wasn't a mad scientist.

59:57

And that's what it sounds like a little bit it

1:00:00

does. It sounds like somebody on some on

1:00:02

a you know, some bad grass. So

1:00:06

in the end, I think you could

1:00:08

consider the project a success

1:00:10

in a way, and that it launched

1:00:13

and they got what they felt like worked. But I

1:00:15

think Sagan had a pretty good um

1:00:18

take on it, which was, you know,

1:00:21

this isn't perfect, but we are not perfect, so

1:00:25

pass the ducy and let's just launch this thing,

1:00:28

right. So he

1:00:30

calculated and he wrote a book about

1:00:32

this whole thing Um called Murmurs

1:00:35

of Earth Um, and

1:00:37

it kind of recounts the entire project

1:00:40

like that's a if you really step

1:00:42

back and look at it, it's a hand handful of people

1:00:44

who came up with a pretty cool idea, got

1:00:46

a bunch of people together to kind of contribute

1:00:48

to it, and and tried to be ambassadors

1:00:51

of Earth at its barressed. That's

1:00:53

what it is at its fullest.

1:00:56

It's one of the grandest gestures humanity

1:00:58

has ever been involved in this really hopeful

1:01:01

throwing a message in the bottle

1:01:03

into the cosmic ocean basically is segan

1:01:06

put it um And

1:01:08

wherever you've where however you

1:01:11

feel you're going to kind of fall somewhere in between

1:01:13

that spectrum. But either way, Um,

1:01:16

it was a remarkable project and just

1:01:19

something. It was so Karl Sagan.

1:01:21

There aren't that many people out there, especially

1:01:24

alive at the time that he was alive, who would

1:01:26

have done that and

1:01:28

not only just thought to do it, had the connections

1:01:30

that NASA to do it, to talk people into

1:01:33

doing this, and then to actually do it

1:01:35

and get it done and get some records

1:01:37

out there in space floating around

1:01:39

in the hopes that maybe one day some aliens

1:01:41

will find it and know that we were here and

1:01:43

maybe come looking for us and wipe us out

1:01:46

totally. So that's

1:01:48

Golden records. Huh, that's Golden Records.

1:01:51

If you want to know more about Golden Records, go search

1:01:54

them on the Internet. There's a bunch of really cool stuff

1:01:56

out there about it. And I think we

1:01:58

think you're gonna like it. Um.

1:02:00

And since I said that it's time for a listener,

1:02:02

Mayo, I'm

1:02:05

gonna call this short and sweet. Hey

1:02:07

guys, greetings from surprisingly sunny

1:02:10

London. I just finished listening to

1:02:12

your newest episode of Nazi Gold, and

1:02:14

while it kills me that I can't even

1:02:16

tell you which one, I am working on a

1:02:18

legal case about one of the

1:02:20

Gold hordes and legends that you mentioned,

1:02:23

and if it gets made public, I

1:02:25

will of course dish out the details. But until

1:02:27

then, just know that it's every

1:02:29

bit as wild, thrilling and

1:02:32

Indiana Jones meets the Goonies as

1:02:34

you could possibly imagine.

1:02:40

She wouldn't even give us anything like don't

1:02:42

tell anybody this or don't read this as listener

1:02:45

mail. But here's the real dirt. Nothing nothing,

1:02:47

just just is straight up like, hey, I've

1:02:49

got all this information that I'm not going to share with you,

1:02:52

and now chuck you you've turned around and

1:02:54

done this to everybody else. I know that's an anonymous

1:02:57

even that

1:03:01

thanks is dripping in sarcasm too.

1:03:04

Well, if you want to be like anonymous and just straight

1:03:06

up tease us with information that you may

1:03:08

or may not be able to share in the future, okay,

1:03:12

that's fine. You can send us an email.

1:03:14

You can wrap it up spanking on the bottom and send it

1:03:16

off to Stuff Podcasts at i

1:03:18

heart radio dot com.

1:03:23

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1:03:25

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