Book Reviewed: The Vinyl Frontier: The Story of the Voyager Golden Record by Jonathan Scott

TThe voyager’s golden record

The contents of this record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by cosmologist Carl Sagan. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind, thunder and animals, including the songs of birds and whales. The record also carries an hour-long recording of the brainwaves of writer and producer Ann Druyan. This is a kind of time capsule for the extraterrestrial species, should these spacecrafts land on an alien planet or intercepted by intelligent beings. They may be able to determine that there are intelligent species in this universe.

Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecrafts have left the solar system and journeying in interstellar space. The message recorded on the disc, from President Jimmy Carter, says that 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.

Music includes that of Mozart, Beethoven, and Stravinsky; Indian classical music of Hindustani vocalist Kesarbai Kerkar, music of Guan Pinghu, Blind Willie Johnson, and rocker Chuck Berry. The inclusion of Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" was most controversial and highly debated.

The record is constructed of gold-plated copper and is 12 inches in diameter. The record's cover is aluminum and electroplated upon it is an ultra-pure sample of the isotope uranium-238. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.468 billion years. It is possible that an alien civilization would be able to determine the age of the record.

The author narrates the story of how the record was created from an historical perspective but does not go into the Voyager missions. This book is not for an average reader but may be interesting to readers of Voyager spacecrafts and the work of Carl Sagan.