Pictures 109 through 113 show some aspects of our emergence as a spacefaring civilization.
109. Radio Telescope (Westerbork Interferometer)
An interferometer is an array of radio antennas that can function as a single telescope. Here a group of humans on bicycles (recognizable from picture 101) is sightseeing. Like a suspension bridge, the shape of a dish antenna is determined entirely by the job it must perform, and so it should be recognized by the radio astronomers of another species.
110. Arecibo Observatory
The 1,000-foot-diameter radio telescope built into a natural bowl-shaped valley in Puerto Rico is the largest radio/radar telescope in the world. The Observatory is part of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center and is funded by the National Science Foundation. Frank Drake is director of NAIC and has used the telescope to conduct searches (so far unsuccessful) for artificial radio signals beamed our way from civilizations elsewhere in space. Advanced civilizations may use radio telescopes to talk to one another. This picture shows that Earth is ready to enter the conversation.
111. Page from a Book
Books have been the means by which humans have stored and remembered information not coded into their genes or brains. Without books and writing, our civilization couldn’t have developed. Our use of notation throughout the picture package shows our use of symbols. We wanted to show the form these symbols take on our home world; we wanted to show a page from a book. But which page from which book?
I spent a wonderful hour with Donald Eddy, the curator of rare books at the Cornell University Library, looking at the most beautiful books I had ever seen—a first-folio Shakespeare, a Renaissance edition of Chaucer with exquisite woodcuts, an edition of Euclid’s Geometry that is four centuries old. Philip Morrison suggested that the most appropriate page to send would be the one from Sir Isaac Newton’s System of the World on which, for the first time in human history, the procedure for launching an object into orbit was correctly explained and diagramed. In a way, this page was the first step on the path that led to Voyager. And beyond its historical importance, the diagram of cannonballs being launched in various orbital and suborbital trajectories might just be decipherable by recipients, who would certainly know the ballistics of launching satellites. Moreover, the diagram is marked by letters (AFB representing the surface of Earth, C the center of Earth, and so forth), and these letter groups reappear in the text. It might be possible for recipients to associate the letter groups in the diagram with those in the text. We have shown a hand turning the page, to give the idea that a book consists of more than one sheet of paper. The page numbers this page and this page can be seen—and recipients will already have learned what the numbers mean. The edition we photographed was printed in 1728. It was the smallest book we were considering, which meant that in terms of the TV quality resolution of the pictures, the lettering on the page would be larger, sharper and clearer. All the lettering can be read, even when this picture is reproduced as a TV image.
The following two pictures show Newton’s principles in practice, giving another clue as to the meaning of the text.
112. Astronaut in Space
American astronaut James McDivitt on a walk in space from a Gemini orbital flight. His hand is visible, which should make certain that recipients recognize that this is a human figure. This picture was sent in color to link the planet positively with Earth of pictures 12 and 13.
113. Titan Centaur Launch
Voyager was launched atop a Titan Centaur rocket identical to the one shown here blasting off from Cape Canaveral in 1975, launching Viking on its trip to Mars.
114. Sunset
We felt that at least one picture ought to be chosen purely for its beauty, to say nothing more than how lovely our planet is. A sunset seemed a good choice. But I might point out that the reddening of light contains information about our atmosphere, and the silhouetted birds show the mechanism of avian flight. This photograph was taken by David Harvey, who also took the father-and-daughter photograph (picture 35).
Three-quarters of the Voyager record is music, and the final two pictures try to explain explicitly what the sounds are that constitute the bulk of our record, using as example a string quartet.
115. String Quartet
This photograph of the Quartetto Italiano shows people engaged in making music. An individual musician wouldn’t have conveyed the idea that music can be a social activity, and pictures of a symphony orchestra had too many people and instruments for anything to be really clear. In this picture, each person is playing an instrument, and the instruments are identical in shape but different in size. They are stringed instruments, and it should be plain that the people are striking or rubbing the strings. The vibration of a string is one of the things whose characteristics (the production of overtones and harmonics) ought to be the same everywhere, and extraterrestrials should know or be able to figure out that a vibrating string makes a certain kind of sound.
116. Score of Quartet and Violin
The violin seen in the last picture is shown here next to a page of musical score. The score is the Cavatina from Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 13, which is the last piece on the record. After this picture, we play a few seconds of the quartet that appears again later on the record. These few seconds are the measures scored on the sheet music. We hope that recipients will realize from analyzing the sound that it has been produced by vibrating string. From there it should be an easy jump to associate the instruments and the people playing them with the vibrating strings of the music. In a real way musical notation reflects the sound of music—a higher note is higher on the staff. Clever extraterrestrials might look at the notation on the score and guess that each note connects in a one-to-one relationship with the marks on that score. If they can figure this out, they will know that music is composed and written down and that we are showing them the notation. We hope this will give them some idea of what the rest of the sounds on the record are all about.
* * *
1 Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence—an acronym coined at an international conference attended by these and other scientists.
2 A more detailed discussion of the design of the Pioneer plaque and the reaction it aroused can be found in The Cosmic Connection by Carl Sagan.
It’s gayer than a greeting, and its sadder than a sigh.
—“Aloha Oe,” Don Blanding
The Voyager spacecraft hurtling through space as I write these words resembles a glistening cocoon carrying on it a gold record, a gift to all our intelligent counterparts inhabiting the universe. The greetings part of the record is a celebration of the human spirit, emphasizing our gregariousness, our joy in being the social creatures we are, and expressing our desire to be thought of as eloquent in this, our first speaking engagement to the universe. We are saying that language is important here, and that we would welcome—indeed, relish—a dialogue with another interlocutory civilization elsewhere in the cosmos.
We are Robinson Crusoe on island Earth—inventive, resourceful and creative, but alone. We scan the rim of the horizon for any passing ships that might be sailing the star-encrusted ocean. Hoping to make contact, we call across the vastness of space; cupping our hands to our mouth we shout, “Hello out there, is anybody home?”
What if there is no reply? Are we just crying in the wilderness? How sad it would be if our cosmic yoo-hoo echoed through the canyon of space and reached no one on the other side of the chasm. All we’d hear would be our own greetings, warm and heartfelt, sounding as hollow as pennies dropped into a glass jar.
Under a sun-drenched Florida sky, a few hundred people gathered, outfitted with special gear for the occasion—sunglasses, binoculars and cameras—to watch Voyager rise from Earth in a blast of white light, a puff of sunset-colored smoke and a sky-splitting roar. Watching Voyager flash out of our sight, and eventually out of our jurisdiction, on its oneway ticket to who-knows-where, one hopes that, like Marco Polo, it will find itself
at the gates of some ancient and great civilization. As our emissary, it will extend greetings and present our calling card (or disc, in this case), as any well-mannered Victorian guest would do when out visiting in the neighborhood.
And what an enticing assortment Voyager is instructed to present to these extraterrestrial hosts, a package of great interest and importance—providing they have ears. Eyes would also be a great help. But since I’m unable to conceive of an organism that is highly developed intellectually and does not have sense organs, I must adopt the assumption that such beings will be able to experience Voyager with both their senses and their intellects.
If you had the opportunity to send a greeting to another sentient being living on another world, what would you convey in the brief seconds you would be allowed to speak? Would your message be a general one, expressing good will from everyone here to everyone there, or would it be a message from you as an individual? Would it sound like the regards one sends to a distant relation, or would the tone be warm and effusive? Perhaps you would be most comfortable with a formal greeting, one set in tradition, or would you just send the basics—“Hi there, we don’t bite, what’s it like where you are? Yours truly, Earth.”
Essentially, all the elements mentioned are contained in the fifty-five salutations, each one of which is spoken in a different language. The speakers were chosen because of their fluency in the language, not because of any special scientific knowledge. They were given no instructions on what to say other than that it was to be a greeting to possible extraterrestrials and that it must be brief. A few of the languages, such as Sumerian, Akkadian and Hittite, are no longer heard in our modern world, and although Latin is, it is used primarily for religious or ceremonial occasions; but because these languages have historic importance, they were taken down from the shelf, dusted off and allowed to shine in their own right, as in the almost biblical Latin message, “Greetings to you, whoever you are: we have good will towards you and bring peace across space.” The Swedish message was personal: “Greetings from a computer programmer in the little university town of Ithaca, on the planet Earth.” I especially like the Mandarin Chinese greeting; its casualness reminds me of a postcard to friends—“Hope everyone’s well. We are thinking about you all. Please come here to visit us when you have time.”
A few people asked the extraterrestrials to be in touch, such as the Indian speaking in Gujarati: “Greetings from a human being of the Earth. Please contact.” A fellow Indian speaking in Rajasthani had other sentiments: “Hello to everyone. We are happy here and you be happy there.” The Turkish speaker made a leap of faith when he assumed not only that he would be talking to friends, but that they would be fluent in Turkish: “Dear Turkish-speaking friends, may the honors of the morning be upon your heads.”
Those of us who worked on this part of the message realized that the most conscientious alien linguist, smarter than our own brilliant Jean François Champollion, couldn’t decipher the vast majority of the languages we sent. But there was not enough physical space on the recording to provide a Rosetta stone, let alone a pocket dictionary to accompany each language. During the entire Voyager project, all decisions were based on the assumption that there were two audiences for whom this message was being prepared—those of us who inhabit Earth, and those who exist on the planets of distant stars.
The Principal Languages of the World
Source: Sidney S. Culbert, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Washington
Total number of speakers of languages spoken by at least one million persons (Midyear 1978).
Language Millions
Achinese (Indonesia) 2
Afrikaans (S. Africa) 7
Albanian 3
Amharic (Ethiopia) 9
Arabic 138
Armenian 4
Assamese1 (India) 13
Aymara (Bolivia; Peru) 1
Azerbaijani (USSR; Iran) 8
Bahasa (see Malay-Indonesian) Balinese 3
Baluchi (Pakistan; Iran) 3
Batak (Indonesia) 2
Bemba (S. Central Africa) 2
Bengali1 (Bangladesh; India) 136
Berber2 (N. Africa) Bhili (India) 4
Bihari (India) 22
Bikol (Philippines) 2
Bisaya (see Cebuano, Panay-Hiligaynon, and Samar-Leyte) Bugi (Indonesia) 2
Bulgarian 9
Burmese 24
Byelorussian (mainly USSR) 9
Cambodian (Cambodia, Asia) 7
Canarese (see Kannada) Cantonese (China) 49
Catalan (Spain; France; Andorra) 6
Cebuano (Philippines) 9
Chinese3
Chuang7 (China)
Chuvash (USSR) 2
Czech 11
Danish 5
Dayak (Borneo) 1
Dutch (see Netherlandish) Edo (W. Africa) 1
Efik 2
English 374
Esperanto 1
Estonian 1
Ewe (W. Africa) 3
Fang-Bulu (W. Africa) 1
Finnish 5
Flemish (see Netherlandish) French 98
Fula (W. Africa) 9
Galician (Spain) 3
Galla (see Oromo) Ganda (or Luganda) (E. Africa) 3
Georgian (USSR) 4
German 120
Gilaki (Iran) 2
Gondi (India) 2
Greek 10
Guarani (mainly Paraguay) 3
Gujarati1 (India) 32
Hakka (China) 22
Hausa (W. and Central Africa) 20
Hebrew 3
Hindi14 224
Hindustani4 Hungarian (or Magyar) 13
Ibibio (see Efik) Ibo (or Igbo) (W. Africa) 11
Ijaw (W. Africa) 1
Ilocano (Philippines) 4
Iloko (see Ilocano) Indonesian (see Malay-Indonesian) Italian 61
Japanese 114
Javanese 46
Kamba (E. Africa) 1
Kanarese (see Kannada) Kannada1 (India) 30
Kanuri (W. and Central Africa) 3
Kashmiri1 3
Kazakh (USSR) 6
Khalkha (Mongolia) 2
Kikongo (see Kongo) Kikuyu (or Gekoyo) (Kenya) 3
Kimbundu (see Mbundu-Kimbundu) Kirghiz (USSR) 2
Kituba (Congo River) 3
Kongo (Congo River) 2
Konkani (India) 2
Korean 56
Kurdish (S.W. of Caspian Sea) 7
Kurukh (or Oraon) (India) 1
Lao5 (Laos, Asia) 3
Latvian (or Lettish) 2
Lingala (see Ngala) Lithuanian 3
Luba-Lulua (Zaire) 3
Luganda (see Ganda) Luhya (or Luhia) (Kenya) 1
Luo (Kenya) 2
Luri (Iran) 2
Macedonian (Yugoslavia) 2
Madurese (Indonesia) 8
Makua (S.E. Africa) 3
Malagasy (Madagascar) 8
Malay-Indonesian 103
Malayalam1 (India) 28
Malinke-Bambara-Dyula (Africa) 6
Mandarin (China) 680
Marathi1 (India) 53
Mazandarani (Iran) 2
Mbundu (Umbundu group) (S. Angola) 3
Mbundu (Kimbundu group) (Angola) 2
Mende (Sierra Leone) 1
Meo (see Miao) Miao (and Meo) (S.E. Asia) 3
Min (China) 40
Minankabau (Indonesia) 4
Moldavian (inc. with Romanian) Mongolian (see Khalkha) Mordvin (USSR) 1
Moré (see Mossi) Mossi (or Moré) (W. Africa) 3
Ndongo (see Mbundu-Kimbundu) Nepali (Nepal; India) 10
Netherlandish (Dutch and Flemish) 20
Ngala (or Lingala) (Africa) 2
Norwegian 5
Nyamwezi-Sukuma (S.E. Africa) 2
Nyanja (S.E. Africa) 3
Oraon (see Kurukh) Oriya1 (India) 25
Oromo (Ethiopia) 7
Panay-Hiligaynon (Philippines) 4
Panjabi (see Punjabi) Pashto (see Pushtu) Pedi (see Sotho, Northern) Persian
26
Polish 37
Portuguese 137
Provençal (Southern France) 5
Punjabi1 (India; Pakistan) 60
Pushtu (mainly Afghanistan) 17
Quechua (S. America) 7
Rajasthani (India) 21
Romanian 22
Ruanda (S. Central Africa) 7
Rundi (S. Central Africa) 4
Russian (Great Russian only) 253
Samar-Leyte (Philippines) 2
Sango (Central Africa) 2
Santali (India) 4
Sepedi (see Sotho, Northern) Serbo-Croatian (Yugoslavia) 19
Shan (Burma) 2
Shona (S.E. Africa) 4
Siamese (see Thai) Sindhi (India; Pakistan) 10
Sinhalese (Sri Lanka) 11
Slovak 5
Slovene (Yugoslavia) 2
Somali (E. Africa) 5
Sotho, Northern (S. Africa) 2
Sotho, Southern (S. Africa) 3
Spanish 231
Sundanese (Indonesia) 16
Swahili (E. Africa) 25
Swedish 10
Tagalog (Philippines) 23
Tajiki (USSR) 3
Tamil1 (India; Sri Lanka) 55
Tatar (or Kazan-Turkic) (USSR) 7
Telugu1 (India) 55
Thai5 34
Thonga (S.E. Africa) 1
Tibetan 6
Tigrinya (Ethiopia) 4
Tiv (E. Central Nigeria) 1
Tswana (S. Africa) 3
Tulu (India) 1
Turkish 42
Turkoman (USSR) 2
Twi-Fante (or Akan) (W. Africa) 5
Uighur (Sinkiang, China) 5
Ukrainian (mainly USSR) 42
Umbumdu (see Mbundu-Ubundu) Urdu1 (Pakistan; India) 63
Uzbek (USSR) 10
Vietnamese 40
Visayan (see Cebuano, Panay-Hiligaynon, and Samar-Leyte) White Russian (see Byelorussian) Wolof (W. Africa) 3