|
Young World
Aboard Voyager 1 and 2
COMPILED BY NIMI KURIAN
Photo: AFP
Gold aluminium cover: Protecting the “Sounds of Earth” records.
A gold aluminium cover was designed to protect the Voyager 1 and 2 “Sounds of Earth” gold-plated records from micrometeorite bombardment. It also serves another purpose — that of providing the finder a key to play the record. Flying aboard Voyagers 1 and 2, launched 30 years ago, are identical “golden” records, carrying the story of Earth far into deep space. The 12 inch gold-plated copper discs contain greetings in 60 languages, samples of mu
sic from different cultures and eras, and natural and man-made sounds from Earth. They also contain electronic information that an advanced technological civilisation could convert into diagrams and photographs. In the 30th year after their August and September 1977 launches, they each are much farther away from Earth and the Sun than Pluto is, and approaching the boundary region — the heliopause — where the Sun’s dominance of the environment ends and interstellar space begins. Voyager 1, more than three times as distant as Pluto, is farther from Earth than any other human-made object and speeding outward at more than 17 kilometers per second (38,000 miles per hour).
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Young World
|
