The Farthest Page #3

I don't know if you've seen it,

but it's the most innocent thing

you can imagine,

and it caused a lot of commotion.

But I thought that was great.

LOMBERG:
At first Carl thought

they'd simply do another plaque,

maybe with some more information,

but Frank Drake...

a brilliant theoretical physicist

but also a very hands-on kind of guy,

he came up with the idea

that for the same amount

of weight and space,

you could send a phonograph record.

[harp music]

DRAKE:
The people who actually

did the science part of Voyager

are always jealous and mad

because the Golden Record

gets more attention

than all the wonderful things they did

exploring the outer planets

of the solar system

except Pluto and all that.

But the main attention goes

to the Golden Record.

Because of the aura

that surrounds anything to do

with extraterrestrial intelligent life,

any kind of effort to contact

extraterrestrial life

is more fascinating

than knowing the chemical makeup

of a mineral on Mars or something.

[laughs]

LOMBERG:

The record is an old-style LP recording.

The only difference is it's on metal,

and that's so it will last a long time.

TIMOTHY FERRIS:

And it was recorded at half-speed

so that gave us two hours of total time.

An hour and a half of it

was devoted to music

and the other half hour contains

all of the other data on the record,

the natural sounds of Earth,

the spoken greetings

and the encoded photographs of Earth.

LOMBERG:
One of the first

questions a lot of people ask

is, well, they'll never

figure out how to play it.

And in fact, we included

a cartridge and stylus

in the package with the record,

and the drawing on the cover

of the record shows the method

by which the stylus is to be

placed on the record.

BELL:

Maybe what's written on it

will seem like kindergarten

scribbles to them,

but they should be able to figure it out

if they've got some smart minds

or whatever's in their heads,

if they even have heads.

[spraying sounds]

KOHLHASE:

What I find interesting

is to protect it from the dust

and tiny particles of the journey,

they put a cover over it,

and on the cover was engraved

the location of Earth,

our solar system,

in terms of its direction

from different pulsars.

CASANI:
A lot of people said,

well, why would you do that?

I said what do you mean?

They say, well, why would you

announce where you are,

you know, because there

are aliens out there,

that probably raid planets

and use them for food

or eat the people or make them slaves.

You know, if they find it,

their technology is probably

more advanced than ours,

they'll come here and destroy us,

so why would you do something like that.

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