Voyager Golden Record
Introduction: Voyager Golden Record
History :
The Voyager Golden records are two phonograph records that are placed in both of the Voyager spacecraft which was launched in 1977. The Golden record consist of sounds and videos portraying the life on earth.The Golden record is intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial form (aliens) who may find them in the distant future. It's a way we humans can say "hello we exist out here".
Voyager 1 is the farthest human made object from earth. The space craft is traveling with a speed of 17 km/sec, it would require about 17,565 years at this speed to travel a light year.
According to me The golden record is one of the finest things that humans have launched into the interstellar space. In a nutshell the Golden record is a message to the intelligent alien life forms. The only difference is when we usually send a message we know to whom we are sending but in this case this is a message to an unknown recipient. The Golden record really fascinates me and is something hopeful representing humankind in this infinite cosmic ocean, I decided to celebrate this by making the Golden record cover.
Step 1: Supplies
* Cardboard
* Scissor
* Compass
* Pencil
* Golden and yellow colour pencil
* Scale
Step 2: Cut Out a Circle
* Take the cardboard piece.
* Draw a circle on the backside of the cardboard piece.
* The actual Golden record is 12 inches (30 cm) in diameter. That means radius of the actual golden record is 15 cm. So make a circle of radius 15 cm on the backside of the cardboard.
* Now cut out the circle with Scissor, make sure that it's a perfect circle, take your time and cut out accurately.
Step 3: Making a Small Hole at the Center
Now we have to make a tiny hole at the center.
* First use the compass to draw a small circle at the center.
* Now pierce with the help of the compass needle throughout the circle.
* Use a pencil to remove this part now by passing a pencil through that tiny circle.
* The tiny hole at the center is ready now.
* Refer to the video above to get a better idea how I made that small hole at the center.
Step 4: Colouring Time
* The real golden record is made up of gold platted copper and also consist of uranium-238 (it will help the extraterrestrial life form to know how old the record is)
* So here we will use golden and yellow colour pencils to get the similar colour.
* Colour uniformly throughout, don't be in a hurry and colour lightly.
* After colouring with yellow colour throughout the record use the golden colour. Colour with the golden pencil lightly to just give it a lustre, don't colour it darkly.
* So now our golden record is completely coloured
Step 5: Inscribing on the Golden Record: Pulsar & Unit Defining Diagram
Now it's the most important task to inscribe on our coloured golden record. I would suggest you to visit Wikipedia Image of the Voyager Golden Record to get the clear image and it would help.
* I started with making the pulsar diagram, the pulsar diagram shows where we live. 703
We are in the middle. The direction and proportional length of the lines show where the distant pulsar are. In binary is the period of each pulsar.
* Then I made the diagram that defines unit to the aliens. As we can't use cm, meters, kilometers etc because we made them up. Therefore we have hyperfine transitions to define unit. The circle that you see is hydrogen with one proton and one electron. Hydrogen being one of the common elements in space it is assumed that aliens may know their properties that is there is transition between parallel & antiparallel spins, whenever this transition happens there is a emission of electromagnetic radiation of wavelength 21 cm and period of 2.1 nanoseconds.
Step 6: More Inscription: the Audio & Video Instructions
* The audio instruction consist of how to properly use the stylus and in binary that the stylus should go around the record once every 3.6 seconds to playback correctly and in total should take one hour to do so.
* Then I drew the video instruction that is given to the aliens to properly view the images and videos, then if the aliens did it right then the first image that they would get is a circle, so it is inscribed on the Golden record to help them.
Step 7: It's Done!
It's done, your golden record is ready. You can do whatever you want with it. I would suggest to place it in a showcase or hang it or stick it on the wall using double sided tape as I did. I love it. One of the most beautiful thing that I have came across is the golden record. 703