Voyager's interstellar greeting shifts from nudity to silhouette

TL;DR Summary
NASA's Voyager Golden Record team, led by Carl Sagan, briefly considered including a nude photograph of a man and a pregnant woman, but public backlash over the nude Pioneer plaque led to a silhouette image instead—a pure black outline showing a pregnant silhouette with the fetus visible inside, while a separate vertebrate-evolution diagram was approved. The record, carrying greetings, sounds, and images, was designed to endure for millions of years as humanity's interstellar message, but the nude depiction was ultimately rejected.
- Carl Sagan's team considered sending a nude photograph of a man and a pregnant woman on the Voyager Golden Record, but after the controversy over the nude Pioneer plaque, the final record used a silhouette instead Space Daily
- The Voyager Golden Record carries greetings in 55 languages — a deliberate attempt to send a small sample of human voices into deep space long after the spacecraft fell silent. Space Daily
- The Voyager probes carry golden records etched with greetings in 55 languages, whale songs, and a woman's brainwaves recorded while she thought about being in love, and the records are designed to remain playable for one billion years drifting through i Space Daily
- The Voyager Golden Record carries a small sample of uranium on its cover, placed there so that whoever finds it can measure the decay and work out how long it has been drifting — a built-in clock for a message engineered to last around a billion years. Space Daily
Reading Insights
Total Reads
0
Unique Readers
9
Time Saved
9 min
vs 10 min read
Condensed
96%
1,901 → 81 words
Want the full story? Read the original article
Read on Space Daily