In 1977, humanity launched two cosmic messages in a bottle: the Voyager 1 and 2 probes, each carrying a Golden Record packed with sounds, images, and greetings from Earth. Forty-seven years later, we’re still refreshing the interstellar inbox, hoping for a reply. If aliens are ghosting us, they’re doing a stellar job.
The Golden Record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk, was NASA’s mixtape for extraterrestrials. It included Bach concertos, Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode, whale songs, and greetings in 55 languages, including a Tibetan chant and a Welsh salutation. There were also 115 images: diagrams of DNA, snapshots of humans eating ice cream, and a map to Earth using pulsars as landmarks. Essentially, it’s Earth’s greatest hits album, curated by a committee that included Carl Sagan. The team even etched instructions for playing the record using symbols—just in case aliens have a turntable but no Google Translate.
Voyager 1, now 15 billion miles away, is humanity’s farthest-flung artifact, drifting through interstellar space. Its twin, Voyager 2, is close behind. Both probes still send data, but their power sources will die by 2030, leaving the Records to float silently. If aliens find them, they’ll need to decipher 1970s analog tech—a challenge akin to humans decoding stone tablets with emojis.
The lack of response hasn’t dampened enthusiasm. Scientists joke that aliens might be “still buffering” the data or unimpressed by our choice to include a photo of a grocery store. Others speculate the Records are lost in space’s equivalent of a spam folder. The real kicker? The probes won’t pass near another star for 40,000 years. By then, humanity might be extinct, or we’ll have invented faster mail delivery.
Critics argue the project was naive. Space is vast, and the odds of aliens stumbling on a tiny probe are slimmer than a black hole’s waistline. Even if they do, would they care about a 1977 Earth snapshot featuring dial-up internet’s ancestors? The Record’s 90 minutes of global music might just confuse them—imagine an alien DJ scratching Johnny B. Goode at a club light-years away.
Yet the Golden Record endures as a symbol of hope and hubris. It’s a time capsule of a species eager to connect, even if it means shouting into the cosmic void. As Sagan said, “The spacecraft will be encountered and the Record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.”
So, until we get a cosmic “hello” (or a cease-and-desist order from alien lawyers), the Golden Record remains humanity’s longest-running prank call. And if you ever feel lonely, remember: somewhere in the void, Chuck Berry is rocking out for an audience of stardust. Just don’t hold your breath for an encore—it’s only been 47 years. Galactic mail delays, am I right?
