[This post includes two short videos best experienced from the Just a Thought website. Please click the link above.]
Voyager1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5,1977. Its mission was to gather information about our solar system and send a message to extraterrestrials who might come in contact with the spacecraft.
President Jimmy Carter sent along this message:
“This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.
“Peace and happiness to all.” 
Voyager has now left our solar system and is fifteen billion miles from earth traveling at a speed of 38,210 miles per hour.
It anxiously anticipates its next encounter — the star Gilease 445 — 40,000 years from now.
On Voyager are two Golden Records with information about the peoples of planet earth, including pictures, music, sounds and greetings in 55 languages and 116 images, equations, diagrams and photos, to depict our understanding of space, chemistry, biology, and aspects of humanity’s culture and achievements.
The Golden Records were the brain child of Carl Sagan who hoped they’d be a representation of the universal truths of our civilization.
It was Sagan who said, when looking at earth appearing as a blue dot in a picture taken from Voyager at a distance of some 4 billion miles,
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.”
Now here’s another real kicker:
Astronomers say it’s possible that Voyager could wander the universe for
- not millions
- not billions
- but trillions of years
Truly, Voyager I is on a journey to the realms of infinity.
How wise it was to select music to help tell the back story of what brings life to human beings on planet earth.
The composer Igor Stravinsky said, “Music is the best means we have of digesting time, music is the sound wave of the soul, music is its own kind of universal language.”
Einstein mused, “If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.”
So just imagine…
A hundred million years from now on some far off galaxy, on some insignificant planet, some kind of someone figures out how to play the music inscribed on the Golden Records.
Then suddenly bursting forth from the discs the listener will hear the music of Stravinsky, Bach, Chuck Berry, Mozart, Blind Willie Johnson, Beethoven, Glenn Gould, Louis Armstrong and the Earth will have announced its presence to the universe.
- We’re here!
- We’re here!
What a monumental moment that will be.
Earth’s coming out party.
Yet that moment will be a long time coming — only after an eternity of interstellar travel.
- Long after our sun has run out of fuel,
- Our mountains, seas, and forests are gone, and
- Humankind has long since taken its final bow.
And maybe not even then.
We simply don’t know.
But take heart. What we do know is that Voyager is forever poised to proclaim we once occupied a teeny tiny space in the cosmos.
“Don’t let it be forgot ~ That once there was a spot ~ For one brief shining moment ~ That was known as Camelot.”
It so drastically puts in perspective how infinitesimally small we are in relationship to the vastness of space and time.
But here’s the grandiloquent truth: We are a part of the universe.
And we do have a story to tell, and each of us has a voice in that story. So Voyager is representing each of us. It is our memory, too, that will travel through space for trillions of years.
Isn’t the mere fact we’re living something for which to be eternally grateful?
How grand is it that we got a shot at life?
I’d ask each of you this question:
If you were to select one or two pieces of music for that ride into the ages what would they be?
If you would like to send me your choices, I will share them in a future post. Send to [email protected].
Here are my selections:
Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy. Performed here by Evgeny Kissin.
Crossroads by Cream.
Just a thought…
Pat
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