F D DrakeRecensioni

where are my stickies!

Wish I could be in on those phone calls between Carl Sagan and Allan Lomax.

El libro que recopila la elección de la banda de sonido del disco de oro que viaja en el Voyager.

Sagan envisioned the ingenious idea of affixing to the Voyager probes a small gold record containing information about this planet, for its potential recovery by an alien species. This book presents a discussion of the conceptionalization and carrying out of the effort to place this gold record on the two Voyager spacecraft sent outside the Solar System. This Voyager Interstellar Record contained digital information on the planet Earth, including photographs, sounds, music, and greetings in more than 40 languages. It was designed to tell an extraterrestrial intelligence who encountered it something about this planet and the life that thrives here, and to give that life form a general idea of where Earth was located in space.

I have always been fascinated by the Voyager spacecraft. The thought of those little workhorses still spinning through space decades after being launched, endlessly and patiently faithful to the commands of those who made them and sent them on their way is always incredible to me. And as our first ambassadors to whatever may live beyond our solar system, nothing is more evocative than the little gold record each carries, with the voices, music and images of humanity. The story of how the record was assembled, the difficulties in finding exactly what the creators wanted to put on it, the instances of serendipity where they found content that was perfect by sheer chance, is enthralling . This book is a treasure, and the farther the little spacecraft travel into the cosmos, the more precious it will become.

After reading this book I know why I only browsed a bit here and there when I first acquired the book. Though I did read the text all the why through and enjoyed much of it, I found myself flipping back and forth to look at various lists, photos, drawings, etc. Murmurs of Earth was something of a walk down memory lane for me as I was studying astronomy during much of the '70's (graduate school) and actually had a slight acquaintance with a handful of the people involved in the Voyager missions ( as I was reminded when I read through the acknowledgments and appendices!). I was also reminded of the conference I attended where Sagan was a featured speaker. This would be a good book for anyone interested in the why and how of the Voyager record - Earth's time capsule now traveling through interstellar space.