[00:00.10]From VOA Learning English,
[00:01.60]this is the Technology Report.
[00:04.30]Space scientists recently announced that Voyager 1
[00:08.38]is the first spacecraft to reach interstellar space
[00:11.91]- the space between stars.
[00:14.25]The spacecraft carries the voices
[00:16.69]and sounds of human beings and animals
[00:19.34]that were living on Earth in 1977 and with launched.
[00:24.46]The sounds are on a gold-plated phonograph record
[00:28.09]secured to the side of the spacecraft.
[00:30.98]Tim Ferris mixed the audio that went on the record.
[00:34.82]"The record is a conventional long-playing phonograph record
[00:39.35]except that it is made of copper
[00:40.75]and it is covered in gold
[00:42.42]and then it is put inside a titanium case to protect it."
[00:45.30]Tim Ferris was one of a small group of people
[00:48.44]who worked to persuade the American space agency
[00:51.67]to attach the record to Voyager's side.
[00:54.81]Annie Druyan, another member of the group says
[00:57.95]the original idea came from Frank Drake,
[01:00.94]an astronomer at the University of California.
[01:04.17]"And it seemed to Frank that the best way to compress
[01:08.51]as much information as possible in a very small space
[01:13.74]was to do it on a phonograph record."
[01:16.38]And there's plenty of information on the record,
[01:19.72]it contains messages in 59 human languages.
[01:23.70][Sounds]
[01:34.77]It has 118 pictures of life on earth,
[01:38.05]and 27 pieces of music.
[01:40.50]Tim Ferris says these demonstrate the diversity of human creation.
[01:46.17]"So there is music on the record from Europe and the United States...
[02:01.29]But also from Africa, the South Pacific and South America...
[02:13.08]Georgia, Russia, all these places - such as China, India..."
[02:23.06]Shortly after American astronauts returned from space in 1968,
[02:28.61]the space agency released a photograph of the Earth
[02:32.20]rising from behind the Moon.
[02:34.14]Margaret Weitekamp is with the Smithsonian Institution's
[02:38.27]National Air and Space Museum.
[02:40.66]He says that picture deeply touched people like Frank Drake
[02:45.42]and his partner on the gold record project,
[02:48.07]the scientist and TV star Carl Sagan.
[02:51.16]The photo made them think carefully about
[02:53.94]how they might present all humanity...
[02:57.03]not just the nation that sent the spacecraft up.
[02:59.87]"Knowing that that picture was taken by a human being
[03:03.06]I think profoundly changed the thoughts of these people
[03:06.94]and really made them start thinking about
[03:10.09]'If we are this pale blue dot in this ocean of vastness,
[03:14.47]then how do we communicate something about who we are?'"
[03:18.80]As for the message they chose,
[03:20.84]Tim Ferris says they could not have chosen anything better.
[03:24.83]"You can't say that an Indian raga or a piece by Bach
[03:29.66]or a Japanese Shakuhachi piece 'means'
[03:34.52]something that you can put into words.
[03:36.51]It is its own end product.
[03:40.05]It means really what it is.
[03:41.69]Similar to things in nature.
[03:43.23]A flower isn't a way of expressing something else.
[03:46.07]It is the end product. It is what it is."
[03:48.66][Sounds]
[03:53.19]And that's the Technology Report from VOA Learning English.