In 1977, humans put a message on a gold disc and threw it into the dark. It is now the most distant thing we have ever made. This is its true story — and then it's your turn to choose what goes on the record.
Ten words and phrases in four activities. Say your answer out loud before you reveal it.
Three words: a time capsule · to represent · to speculate. Say the right one, then reveal.
Read each part. Then answer the quick questions from memory before you check. Then discuss the question.
In the summer of 1977, NASA launched two spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Their job was to visit the giant planets at the edge of the solar system. After that, they would keep going, out into the space between the stars. Nobody expected them ever to come back.
Then someone had a wonderful idea. Why not put a message on board, in case anybody ever found them? NASA asked the astronomer Carl Sagan to lead a small team. They had only a few months to decide how to describe an entire planet.
They chose a record: a copper disc covered in gold, the size of a vinyl album. It was a clever choice. A record can hold sound, and it can be made very durable. Scientists think the gold-covered disc could last for a billion years — much longer than any building, book or country.
The team also had to explain how to play it. On the cover, they drew the instructions as pictures, starting with a record player. They added a map to Earth that uses fourteen pulsars — stars that flash like clocks — to show where the Sun is. And they stuck a tiny piece of uranium to the cover. Uranium slowly decays at a known speed, so anyone clever enough to measure it could work out how old the record is.
1. Why did the team choose a gold-covered record?
2. How does the cover explain where the record comes from, and how old it is?
1. A record can hold sound, and the gold-covered disc is durable — it could last for a billion years.
2. A map using fourteen pulsars shows where the Sun is; a tiny piece of uranium works like a clock, because it decays at a known speed.
The team couldn't send everything. They chose 115 pictures, encoded as sound: a mother feeding her baby, a supermarket, a traffic jam, a sunset, a school. They did not choose pictures of war or disease. They wanted to show what humans are like at our best.
The disc has greetings in 55 languages, from Sumerian — one of the oldest languages ever written down — to modern Chinese. The English greeting was recorded by Sagan's six-year-old son: "Hello from the children of planet Earth."
There are sounds of Earth: wind, thunder, whales, laughter, a kiss, footsteps, a mother talking to her newborn baby. And there are ninety minutes of music from all over the world. Bach and Beethoven are there. So is a Peruvian wedding song, a night chant from a Native American community, and "Johnny B. Goode" by Chuck Berry. One of the strangest pieces is "Dark Was the Night", recorded in 1927 by Blind Willie Johnson. It has no words — only a man humming and playing a guitar, alone in the dark. Many people feel that it says something true about being human. Sagan wanted a Beatles song too, but the record company would not give permission, so it was left out.
The creative director was Ann Druyan. She added one last idea: for about an hour, she lay still while a machine recorded the electrical signals in her brain. She thought about history, about the problems of the Earth, and about what it feels like to be in love. Two days earlier, she and Carl Sagan had agreed to marry. The hour of brain signals was compressed into about a minute of sound, and it is on the record too.
1. What did the team decide not to include in the pictures, and why?
2. Which two items on the record seem the most personal or surprising? Why?
1. Pictures of war and disease. They wanted to show humans at our best.
2. Possible answers: the recording of Ann Druyan's brain while she thought about love; the English greeting by a six-year-old boy; the wordless blues song "Dark Was the Night". Your own reasons count!
Voyager 1 left the Sun's influence in 2012 and entered interstellar space. Today it is more than twenty-five billion kilometres away, travelling at about seventeen kilometres every second. Its radio signals take almost a whole day to reach us. It is the most distant object that humans have ever made.
But it isn't going towards any star. In about forty thousand years, it will pass within 1.6 light-years of a star called Gliese 445 — and that's the closest it will come. Space is so empty that the chance of anyone finding the record is, honestly, a very long shot. Sagan knew that.
In 1990, when Voyager 1 was about to leave the planets for good, Sagan asked NASA to turn its camera around and take one last picture of home. From six billion kilometres away, Earth is less than a single point of light — a pale blue dot, in a beam of sunlight. Sagan later wrote that everyone who ever lived has lived on that tiny speck.
So who is the record really for? Sagan and Druyan both described the record as an act of hope: a message in a bottle, but also a statement about us. Choosing what to say about the human race made them decide what they believed about it.
1. How likely is it that anyone will ever find the record? Why?
2. What did Sagan ask NASA to do in 1990, and what did the picture show?
1. Very unlikely. The probe isn't heading for any star — it will pass Gliese 445 in about 40,000 years at 1.6 light-years' distance — and space is mostly empty.
2. To turn the camera back and photograph Earth from about six billion kilometres away. It showed Earth as a tiny pale blue dot in a beam of light.
The record will travel for millions of years. To talk about a time so far away — and about things nobody can check — English has two useful tools: the future perfect and modals of speculation.
Put the verb in brackets into the future perfect.
1. By the year 10,000, every person who is alive today (die).
2. In a billion years, the continents (move) so far that the map of the Earth will look nothing like ours.
3. Voyager 1 left Earth in 1977. By 2030, it (travel — use the continuous form) for more than fifty years.
1. will have died 2. will have moved 3. will have been travelling
will have + past participle; the continuous form is will have been + -ing.
Write one sentence for each. Use the structure in brackets.
1. What will have disappeared from daily life in a hundred years? (future perfect)
2. What may well still exist in a thousand years? (may well)
3. Someone finds the record in 10,000 years and sees the picture of a supermarket. What might they think? (might have / must have about us)
1. By 2126, cash will have disappeared from daily life, and most people will have stopped driving their own cars.
2. Poetry may well still exist in a thousand years, because people have always wanted to say things beautifully.
3. They might think that we had too much food, or that we must have been very worried about running out of it.
Your answers will be different. Check the form: will have + participle, may well + verb, might / must have + participle.
You'll use these again in the Speak tab.
You have a new disc, and room for only a few things. Choose carefully: you can't send everything, and you can't change your mind after the launch. Pick your items, then say why each one belongs.
One more slot: anything at all — a sound, a picture, a smell described in words, an object, a sentence. Write it here.
Write your greeting to whoever finds the record. Twenty-five words at most. It must be understandable to someone who has never heard a human language.
Say it out loud first, then write one sentence for each choice.
Choose some items above and they will appear here.
The facts in this story are real. But the story raises questions that nobody — not even the scientists — can answer for certain.
Speak against the clock — and use the future perfect and the speculation structures: will have, may well, must have, can't have.
Retell the story in your own words. Use these steps: the idea → a few months and the gold disc → the cover and the uranium clock → the pictures → the sounds and music → the brain recording → the long way out → the pale blue dot.
Use at least two future perfects, two speculation structures and five key words (durable, encode, interstellar, time capsule, represent, speculate, flattering, long shot, launch, message in a bottle).
Present the record you built in the previous tab, as if the person listening is the first being ever to find it. Say what is on the disc, why you chose each item, and what you left out on purpose. Then answer one question from your listener: "Why should I trust this portrait of your planet?"
First argue FOR sending messages: think about hope, curiosity and what the record taught us about ourselves. Then argue AGAINST: think about Hawking's warning, the cost, and the question of who has the right to speak for every human. Finally, say what you really think.
Or choose one of these: