WEBVTT - How the Voyager Golden Records Work 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:03.520 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of five 0:00:03.600 --> 0:00:12.760 Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:16.759 I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. We're 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:23.119 just batching it going stagged today. First stuff you should know. Yeah, 0:00:23.200 --> 0:00:28.200 our our date's not here. We're one another's date. Whether 0:00:28.240 --> 0:00:30.480 you like it or not, I'm your date. Were you 0:00:30.560 --> 0:00:36.000 a big school dance guy? I was big at staying 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:38.920 away from them. He didn't go to those things. I 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:41.080 went to like one or two in eighth grade maybe, 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:43.040 but I learned my lesson early on. I got you 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:46.159 no prom. Yeah, I mean I went to prom and 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:48.599 all that, but you know, like the normal school dances 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:51.040 and things like that, like the under the Sea dance 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:54.200 in I didn't go to that all week. We only 0:00:54.200 --> 0:00:56.880 had two We had homecoming and prom and that's it. 0:00:58.160 --> 0:01:00.440 Oh well, I think you know how Oh there was 0:01:00.520 --> 0:01:02.720 so little to do that. There were tons of dances 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:07.520 all the time. Sure, man, just like in the movies. 0:01:08.560 --> 0:01:10.360 It is just like in the movies when it's super 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:13.880 cold outside and you're just stuck inside, everybody's just gotta dance. Oh, 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:17.320 I guess we were just outdoors in the the heat 0:01:17.319 --> 0:01:20.640 and humidity. Right. You you had hiking, We had dances. 0:01:22.120 --> 0:01:24.440 So what's this got to do with the Golden Records? 0:01:25.000 --> 0:01:30.840 I don't know. This is kind of cool. Very seventies. Yeah, 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:33.600 that's the thing, man, It doesn't get much more seventies 0:01:33.640 --> 0:01:36.200 than than this. Actually, this one and the other one 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:39.759 that we're doing today about as seventies as it gets. 0:01:39.800 --> 0:01:44.759 But yeah, so we're talking about Chuck. Two golden records, 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:49.080 two very special golden records, identical in every way. Um. 0:01:49.160 --> 0:01:51.360 They were pressed in a series of I'm not sure 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:54.600 how many because I once saw Carl Sagan messing with one. 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:57.680 So there maybe three, there, maybe four, I don't know, 0:01:58.000 --> 0:02:00.600 but there are at least two. And right now, these 0:02:00.720 --> 0:02:05.480 very very special gold records are somewhere outside of our 0:02:05.800 --> 0:02:10.200 solar system. They are aboard two space probes, Voyager one 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:15.440 and two, that were launched in um and for the 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:19.320 Voyager probes are the first two human made objects to 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:22.560 travel beyond our Solar system, which is pretty cool in 0:02:22.560 --> 0:02:26.560 and of itself. Yeah, there are billions of miles about 0:02:26.639 --> 0:02:32.119 thirteen billion miles from Earth right now, going very fast. Yeah, 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:34.919 and uh, you mentioned Carl Sagan. This was his sort 0:02:34.960 --> 0:02:40.560 of baby, and the idea is, hey, let's launch something 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:45.200 into outer space on the well, I mean the sort 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:50.200 of reason was in case and another civilization and extraterrestrial 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:54.240 being or life force could come across it, this will 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:58.359 be our greeting to them. But when you read into it, 0:02:58.360 --> 0:03:02.040 it's probably really unlikely that might happen, and it it 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:04.280 was sort of a pr thing for NASA and also 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:08.120 just like made us feel better, I think, yeah, and 0:03:08.400 --> 0:03:10.960 like you're saying, it's very seventies and that it was 0:03:11.040 --> 0:03:14.119 part of this kind of larger trend in the Steffanies, 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:17.400 mostly helmed by Carl Sagan from what I could tell 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:22.600 where um, there was this kind of push to get 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:26.519 the world to agree like becoming part of some galactic 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:29.800 you know, community would be a good thing for humanity 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:33.200 and start thinking beyond the realms of Earth, but at 0:03:33.240 --> 0:03:35.840 the same time thinking about Earth and how we can 0:03:35.880 --> 0:03:38.240 take care of it. Was all kind of intertwined and connected, 0:03:38.480 --> 0:03:40.680 and it all kind of took shape in this kind 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:46.280 of collective human project of creating messages and bottles and 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:49.200 shooting them out into space. And the wisdom of that 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:53.280 today is is questioned by some people and me, Oh yeah, 0:03:53.320 --> 0:03:56.160 there are some people who say, like, m, it's not 0:03:56.240 --> 0:03:58.600 necessarily the best thing to do to start sending messages 0:03:58.640 --> 0:04:01.720 into space before we have much of a clue of 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:04.880 what if anything is out there. Just isn't the safest 0:04:04.880 --> 0:04:06.840 play you can make. But at the time, and I 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:09.400 saw a quote from Frank Drake, who was heavily involved 0:04:09.400 --> 0:04:14.080 in these projects. Um he he said, you know, back then, 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:16.640 everybody was an optimist. Like there was nobody who wondered 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:19.040 like whether this was a smart or foolish thing to do. Like, 0:04:19.240 --> 0:04:21.159 of course it was a good idea. Of course, the 0:04:21.360 --> 0:04:24.320 whoever we contacted would be friendly, so why would we 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:25.760 not want to get in touch with them? And that 0:04:25.839 --> 0:04:28.560 was kind of like this driving thing, like this optimism 0:04:28.560 --> 0:04:32.640 and enthusiasm for reaching out beyond earth and and and 0:04:32.720 --> 0:04:35.560 kind of saying, hey, we're here and we want everybody 0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:39.640 to take us seriously. Now, that was a big seventies 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:43.600 thing and kind of the drive behind this Golden Record thing. Yeah, 0:04:43.640 --> 0:04:46.159 and uh, one thing is for sure, if you don't 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:48.320 feel great about it and other people don't feel great 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:51.919 about it, ts, it is far far too late to 0:04:51.960 --> 0:04:54.520 have that concern. That is a real argument about this, 0:04:54.600 --> 0:04:57.080 because yeah, like you're saying they're billions of miles or 0:04:57.160 --> 0:05:00.520 saying would put it billions and billions of miles from Earth. 0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:03.800 I think something like thirteen billion miles by now, traveling 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:08.640 thirty eight thousand miles per hour constantly. So yeah, the 0:05:08.640 --> 0:05:10.880 the cat is out of the bag, as it were, 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:13.520 the probe is out of the Solar System, so it 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:16.000 is too late. Um, but we can still poop poo 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:18.960 it in question whether it was foolish or not in retrospect. 0:05:18.960 --> 0:05:22.720 That's fun. Yeah, it's fun to poop on Carl Sagan's dream. Hey, 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:25.159 you know me, Man Sagan is one of my heroes. 0:05:25.480 --> 0:05:29.480 He was a pretty interesting cat. But um, these Golden Records, 0:05:29.520 --> 0:05:32.159 like you said, they were kind of his baby. Um. 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:34.320 And we were talking about the Voyager Probe and the 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:39.279 Golden Records almost interchangeably. The Golden Records are aboard Voyager 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:41.920 one and Voyager two, which have shot out into the 0:05:41.960 --> 0:05:46.520 Solar System and will be drifting in space unless somebody 0:05:46.520 --> 0:05:48.800 grabs them and and says, what's on here, you know, 0:05:49.040 --> 0:05:53.320 shakes it, the records fall out, they'll just keep going forever. 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:57.000 And they actually built these Golden Records so that they'll 0:05:57.080 --> 0:05:59.920 last at least a billion years by most as to 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:04.200 vacuum sealed in the further vacuum of space, covered by 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:09.479 an aluminum cover that will protect it from cosmic rays. UM, 0:06:09.520 --> 0:06:13.039 basically indefinitely for all all, all those of us alive 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:16.400 are concerned. Yeah, and there we keep saying golden records. 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:20.359 They are gold plated. They're not solid gold like the dancers. 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:24.800 They are copper and they are covered in gold. And 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:28.080 they went with that because that was just well a 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:31.320 few reasons. One is, obviously we didn't have We had tape, 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:36.400 but tape would disintegrate eventually. We did not have digital 0:06:36.560 --> 0:06:39.320 storage like we do today today. If we wanted to 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:43.600 do this, we can include whatever we wanted. Basically, UM, 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:48.240 we could include like all of humanity, every recipe, every song, 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:51.960 every movie, every painting, anything we wanted, every speech ever made. 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:55.640 But back then they figured a record was the way 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:59.120 to go, and this copper, gold plated record was the 0:06:59.160 --> 0:07:02.640 thing that would hold up the best. Yeah, that's actually 0:07:02.640 --> 0:07:04.640 funny you bring that up, because I was thinking of 0:07:04.920 --> 0:07:08.279 doing UM an episode on DNA data storage where you 0:07:08.279 --> 0:07:11.320 can put literally all of the world's information into like 0:07:11.800 --> 0:07:15.600 encoded in d NA. UM. This is like the opposite 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:19.520 of that. I think the onboard computers for Voyager. Um 0:07:19.720 --> 0:07:21.920 Ruse helps us with this one. He said that they 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:28.800 had something like sixties seven of of of ram of 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:32.960 of memory aboard. Yeah, and you're like, wow, we've really 0:07:33.000 --> 0:07:36.280 come a long way. But think about how elegant that 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:41.600 code had to be to drive these two space probes 0:07:42.280 --> 0:07:44.400 that were not only like these these were weren't just 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:46.280 like hey, let's see how far we can shoot this 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:49.000 thing like skipping a rock on a pond. Like these 0:07:49.080 --> 0:07:54.200 rocks had cameras and equipment and engines and all sorts 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:57.240 of things aboard that were that were run and operated 0:07:57.280 --> 0:08:02.280 by these onboard computers that had sixties seven kilobites RAM. 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:06.520 That is spectacularly impressive. Yeah, it doesn't seem possible. Actually, 0:08:07.080 --> 0:08:09.200 but they're well actually, I mean I was gonna say 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:11.960 there there were they're out there, but we're just kind 0:08:11.960 --> 0:08:13.480 of taking it on faith. At the r the whole 0:08:13.520 --> 0:08:16.000 thing could be one big lie. All right, So if 0:08:16.000 --> 0:08:17.960 we're going to talk about Golden records, we need to 0:08:18.000 --> 0:08:22.320 talk about what preceded the Golden records. Um Dave calls 0:08:22.360 --> 0:08:23.800 it a rough draft, and that's kind of a good 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:26.640 way to put it. But in the early seventies there 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:30.160 were the Pioneer ten and eleven missions. These were two 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:34.600 space probes launched Passi asteroid Belt and their gold was 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:38.720 to take the first pictures up close of Jupiter and Saturn. 0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:43.080 And we can't communicate with these guys anymore, they're way 0:08:43.080 --> 0:08:47.000 way out there. But Sagan went to NASA and said, hey, 0:08:47.040 --> 0:08:49.760 what do you think of sending a message in a bottle? 0:08:49.800 --> 0:08:54.199 Basically like you mentioned a cosmic message and NASA everyone 0:08:54.320 --> 0:08:58.560 was smoking weed back then, including Carl Sagan. Oh, I'm sure, 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:02.600 uh I bet that segan weed was good too. Yeah, 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:05.640 we talked about it. Remember in the Nuclear winner Um 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:09.640 episode that he discovered weed. Actually, he might not have 0:09:09.720 --> 0:09:12.640 been smoking weed at the time of the Pioneer plaques, though, 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:15.880 how do you think was that pre Uh? I think so. 0:09:16.000 --> 0:09:18.120 I think that came later when he when he met 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:21.560 Andrewy and oh she was she was the influence. Huh 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:24.480 I think so? All right, Well, at any rate, NASA 0:09:24.520 --> 0:09:28.280 said that's a cool idea, let's do this. At the time, 0:09:28.320 --> 0:09:32.559 he was married to his second wife, Linda Salzman Sagan 0:09:33.160 --> 0:09:35.760 and the aforementioned Frank Drake, who was one of his 0:09:36.240 --> 0:09:40.680 old Cornell buddies, and they came up with a plaque, 0:09:40.920 --> 0:09:45.640 an inscripted plaque for this launch. Right. So one of 0:09:45.679 --> 0:09:49.680 the very famous things on this pioneer plaque was a 0:09:50.080 --> 0:09:53.680 an etching of a naked man and a naked woman. 0:09:53.720 --> 0:09:58.960 And they're anatomically correct, um and very impressive. Yeah super 0:09:59.520 --> 0:10:05.960 um almost almost shame like shamingly so yeah, but um, 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:08.640 they like they really went to town and the guy 0:10:08.720 --> 0:10:14.000 didn't they so um. A lot of people like I 0:10:14.080 --> 0:10:16.280 don't know, a lot of people actually couldn't find any 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:20.120 any contemporary articles on it. Um, but there was this 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:24.040 at least enough of a public outcry that it's worth 0:10:24.080 --> 0:10:29.839 noting against spending taxpayer money on creating what some people 0:10:29.840 --> 0:10:34.320 called space porn because I guess in the two and 0:10:34.400 --> 0:10:38.280 seventy three people had, you know, a real aversion to 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:44.200 line drawings of naked men and naked women put onto 0:10:44.280 --> 0:10:46.320 a plaque and sent out into space, even though what 0:10:46.360 --> 0:10:48.880 they were trying to say is, hey, these are what 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:52.480 humans look like. How how about it? What do you 0:10:52.520 --> 0:10:55.360 think you like what you see? Yeah? I mean Dave 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:56.920 said there was an uproar. I'm not sure if it 0:10:56.960 --> 0:11:01.800 was quite that bad, but it was the thing enough NASA. Um, well, 0:11:01.840 --> 0:11:04.760 we'll talk about what happened later on on their second 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:08.520 attempt at naked bodies. And well, even today I want 0:11:08.520 --> 0:11:11.240 to say one more thing, even today on about those 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:15.040 some people are like, well, notably either both white people 0:11:15.640 --> 0:11:17.880 or if you look, the woman standing a little more 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:21.280 demurely than the man is. But these were not things 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:24.400 that Sagan and his friends were thinking of at the time. 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:26.600 They were like just trying to say, this is what 0:11:26.600 --> 0:11:29.800 what humans look like with the amount of space that 0:11:29.840 --> 0:11:33.160 we have. Um. And it's worth pointing out too. If 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:35.360 you look at the picture of the man, he's holding 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:37.199 his hands up like, hey, how's it going. He's kind 0:11:37.200 --> 0:11:40.280 of waving in like a friendly gesture. Sure, just like, hey, 0:11:40.559 --> 0:11:43.720 I'm just standing here naked. How you doing? Here's my penis? 0:11:44.559 --> 0:11:47.480 How are you? Did you bring your keys? This is 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:50.360 the seventies and this whole thing, And by the way, 0:11:50.400 --> 0:11:53.079 you should just look it up if you if you've 0:11:53.080 --> 0:11:54.920 never seen this, it's kind of cool looking, it's very 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:57.959 seventies and it's um you can get on a T shirt, 0:11:58.000 --> 0:12:00.360 which I ever saw one of these out that's a 0:12:00.480 --> 0:12:03.520 very super nerdy sort of in the no T shirt 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:06.120 to have I would think, yeah, for sure. But the 0:12:06.160 --> 0:12:08.760 other three things, So you got the naked bodies, and 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:12.200 you've got friendly man waving the ladies just standing there 0:12:12.240 --> 0:12:14.280 like I guess he's speaking for me because it is 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:18.959 the seventies. And there are three other inscriptions that are 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:24.320 all attempts to basically map where the Earth is in 0:12:24.360 --> 0:12:27.760 the universe and in our solar system. Uh, something that 0:12:27.800 --> 0:12:30.000 they would do later on the Golden Records. That was 0:12:30.360 --> 0:12:33.120 an important part of both of these things is to say, like, 0:12:33.600 --> 0:12:36.079 not only who we are, but where are we and 0:12:36.360 --> 0:12:38.600 this is you know, this is where we are in 0:12:38.600 --> 0:12:42.280 the map, Yeah, which is really hard to do. I 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:45.040 mean not just the idea that this might not be 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:48.839 found for tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:51.640 millions of years. So you're trying to communicate in the 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:55.760 future like that that nuclear semiotics episodally, Yeah, but you're 0:12:55.760 --> 0:12:59.600 also trying to communicate to somebody who, um, it's not 0:12:59.679 --> 0:13:01.880 even human, it's never been to Earth, has no idea 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:05.240 what we're talking about. And then you add the third 0:13:05.280 --> 0:13:08.640 layer of that that when they approached NASA with this 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:11.120 plaque idea, NASA said, that's a really great idea, let's 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:13.720 do it, give it to us yesterday. So they had 0:13:13.720 --> 0:13:15.640 to come up with it really quickly. And Frank Drake 0:13:15.720 --> 0:13:17.640 is kind of the unsung hero and a lot of 0:13:17.679 --> 0:13:21.559 this because he was a very intelligent astronomer, one of 0:13:21.600 --> 0:13:25.440 the founders of ct UM, the the guy who originated 0:13:25.440 --> 0:13:30.040 the Drake equation which is a probabilistic um formula for 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:34.160 figuring out how the probability of whether there's alien life 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:36.200 or not in the universe. Just an all around cool guy. 0:13:36.520 --> 0:13:39.160 But he was not the science communicator like second one. 0:13:39.240 --> 0:13:41.959 So Sagan gets a lot of credit um, not necessarily 0:13:42.000 --> 0:13:43.920 because he was hogging it, but just because he was 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:46.400 the face or the mouthpiece of all these projects. But 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:48.520 Frank Drake came up with a lot of these ideas, 0:13:48.800 --> 0:13:50.640 and he was the one who came up with this 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:55.439 universal key for for figuring things like distance in time 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:58.680 and getting that across an alien civilization. And it was 0:13:58.760 --> 0:14:02.560 just straight up genius in its simplicity but also in 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:07.120 its universality too. Yeah, so it is interesting. It is 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:09.880 like the Semiotics episode in that thought experiment of like 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:14.640 how would I communicate with something that I mean it clearly? 0:14:14.840 --> 0:14:18.120 You just can't write out something in English. So they went, 0:14:18.679 --> 0:14:24.160 like you said, very smartly, with hydrogen the most abundant 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:26.600 element in the universe, and they're like, if there's something 0:14:26.600 --> 0:14:29.760 that's gonna find this, they're gonna know what hydrogen is. 0:14:30.520 --> 0:14:32.440 There are a lot of assumptions made, but the assumption 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:35.120 that they would know what hydrogen hydrogen is was a 0:14:35.120 --> 0:14:37.680 pretty good starting point. I think I agreed that is 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:40.240 a very good assumption. Most abundant element in the universe. 0:14:40.280 --> 0:14:42.520 Like you said, if you are traveling out in the universe, 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:45.800 you have any kind of grasp on chemistry, Um, you 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:48.760 know about hydrogen and you probably have studied it pretty well. 0:14:49.040 --> 0:14:51.960 And the idea is if you're a space faring civilization 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:54.960 and you've come across the space probe, you kind of 0:14:54.960 --> 0:14:57.840 would have to be you probably at least have that 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:03.400 most basic understanding of chemistry, which is presumed to be universal. Right. Yeah, 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:07.320 So the deal with hydrogen atoms is very very very rarely, 0:15:07.680 --> 0:15:10.360 Uh this happens, but it does happen. The electron will 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:13.600 start spinning in a different direction and it will change 0:15:13.720 --> 0:15:16.920 energy states. Uh. Pretty good band name. This is known 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:23.200 as hyperfine transition math rock. I guess gotta be maybe Prague, 0:15:24.600 --> 0:15:27.840 but de yeah, math Rock for sure. And when this happens, Uh, 0:15:27.880 --> 0:15:32.400 they release a pulse of electromagnic magnetic radiation. And the 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:36.600 key here is that it has a fixed wavelength and period. Right, So, 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:38.800 no matter where you are in the universe, if you 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:42.080 know about hydrogen, you know that it takes point seven 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:46.000 nanoseconds for this transition to take place, and that it 0:15:46.080 --> 0:15:50.640 releases a um an energy, a little bolt of lightning 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:55.200 basically with the um the wavelength of what is it, 0:15:56.240 --> 0:16:00.960 one cimeter centimeter wavelength? Right, said, this is just no 0:16:01.000 --> 0:16:04.320 matter where you're in the universe, we assume hydrogen has 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:07.520 these properties. And so Frank Drake came on, came along 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:10.280 and thought, well, you know what if that's true everywhere 0:16:10.320 --> 0:16:12.680 in the universe, and we basically put a little symbol 0:16:12.720 --> 0:16:16.280 there of hydrogen atom going into another hydrogen atom showing 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:19.520 the two different energy states. They'll say, oh, hydrogen, we 0:16:19.560 --> 0:16:22.280 know about that. Oh they're talking about the transfer of 0:16:22.640 --> 0:16:26.760 the translation between energy states, the hyperfine transition. Um, we 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:29.480 know all about that. So now we can use those 0:16:30.200 --> 0:16:32.800 those numbers that are going to be the same everywhere 0:16:32.840 --> 0:16:36.880 in the universe as a key to multiply and divide 0:16:36.880 --> 0:16:40.680 with and um basically use that too as a measure 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:43.360 of time and distance. That's going to be used in 0:16:43.400 --> 0:16:45.600 the rest of the schematic that they put on the 0:16:45.640 --> 0:16:48.920 Pioneer plaque. Yeah. The only other constant that they had 0:16:48.920 --> 0:16:54.000 in mind was the fact that Sammy Hagar can't drive. Wait, 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:56.040 this would have been before that. I guess this should 0:16:56.040 --> 0:16:58.480 have just had him deliver the plaque all over the place, 0:16:58.520 --> 0:17:01.720 you know. Yeah, and that's wheat uh ferrari or whatever 0:17:01.760 --> 0:17:04.679 that was. He would drive at least thirty eight thousand 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:06.439 miles prior, if he got the chance, I'll tell you 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:12.520 that much. So, Um, they didn't have Sammy Hagar available. 0:17:12.560 --> 0:17:14.600 I think in nineteen seventy two he wasn't as well 0:17:14.640 --> 0:17:18.160 known as he is today obviously. UM. So instead they 0:17:18.200 --> 0:17:20.720 put these things aboard the Pioneer UM. And then in 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:27.159 addition to that, hydrogen uh, the hydrogen um superfine hyperfine transition, 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:34.320 that's superfine, superfly. Um. They created a diagram of our 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:37.280 place in the universe. And here was another way that 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:40.879 Frank Drake shined. He said, Okay, what would if you 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:44.760 were an alien civilization, what would you use to basically 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:48.760 as signposts around the universe, and he figured out that 0:17:48.840 --> 0:17:54.040 pulsars would probably be used in Pulsars are these incredibly dense, 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:59.879 incredibly energetic collapse stars, and they're usually about twelve or 0:18:00.040 --> 0:18:04.760 thirteen miles in diameter, so roughly the size of a city. Small, 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:08.440 you know, like a city, but they have the mass 0:18:08.480 --> 0:18:12.080 many many, many times our own sons very very dense, 0:18:12.240 --> 0:18:15.439 and they spin really fast, and as they spin, they 0:18:15.480 --> 0:18:18.639 release these bursts of energy, and when you're looking at them, 0:18:18.680 --> 0:18:21.200 that burst of energy gets directed at you. It is 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:24.880 certain rate, a certain repeating rate, basically like a lighthouse. 0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:30.240 These are celestial lighthouses. And because they spin differently, each 0:18:30.240 --> 0:18:32.919 one has a different frequency or a different rate of 0:18:33.400 --> 0:18:37.440 strobe basically, and so you can say, well, this pulsar 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:40.240 has this rate. That's this pulsar. I know that's over here. 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:43.320 Let's see where this other pulsar isn't Frank Drake chose 0:18:43.359 --> 0:18:48.320 fourteen pulsars and basically said, here's their distance from our sun. 0:18:48.920 --> 0:18:51.879 Now if you if you can find these pulsars, you 0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:54.880 can use that as basically a map back to our 0:18:54.920 --> 0:18:57.360 solar system. Yeah, and it's cool looking. If you look 0:18:57.359 --> 0:18:59.800 at the picture, it's um, it looks sort of like 0:18:59.800 --> 0:19:04.000 a icicle wheel with spokes, except there's no uh tube 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:07.600 or tire, and the spokes are at varying lengths. Yeah, 0:19:07.720 --> 0:19:11.440 it's something I'm missing. The tires missing. Yeah, the tires missing. 0:19:11.440 --> 0:19:14.239 I said that for sure, it would be a very 0:19:14.280 --> 0:19:17.400 awkward bike to ride, would because, like you said, they're 0:19:17.480 --> 0:19:20.199 varying lengths, so kind of to be up in and 0:19:20.280 --> 0:19:23.560 down it would not be comfortable chuck. Yeah. So the 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:26.880 the idea is that they could see this, they would 0:19:26.960 --> 0:19:30.120 understand what it means these assumptions again, and they would 0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:35.400 compare their current map of the pulsars. So this enables 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:39.040 a time stamp basically as a secondary function because all 0:19:39.040 --> 0:19:42.239 this stuff is changing. So if they compared where they 0:19:42.280 --> 0:19:46.240 are whenever this thing gets found, presumably to where it 0:19:46.320 --> 0:19:49.960 was spoked out in nineteen seventy two or whatever, then 0:19:50.000 --> 0:19:53.040 they could determine how many millions of years had passed 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:56.600 since this thing was launched. Yeah, it's it's pretty it's 0:19:56.640 --> 0:19:59.639 pretty amazing stuff. I mean, like the distance from the 0:19:59.640 --> 0:20:01.480 pulse are so the sun are spelled out in like 0:20:01.560 --> 0:20:04.879 binary code that if you multiply that by the wavelength 0:20:04.960 --> 0:20:08.440 of the hyperfine transition. You get the actual distance, um, 0:20:08.880 --> 0:20:12.240 the the frequency of those pulsars. You can figure out 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:16.400 which pulsar they're talking about because you multiply that binary 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:21.200 code by the the the time period of the hyperfine transition. 0:20:21.320 --> 0:20:23.760 It was just like Frank Drake came up with a 0:20:23.960 --> 0:20:28.439 universal way to create a roadmap around the universe, no 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:31.520 matter where you are. It's just mind blowing that they 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:34.359 come up with, especially on the fly too. Yeah, time 0:20:34.400 --> 0:20:38.120 stamped roadmap even it's prettying, It really is pretty amazing. 0:20:38.160 --> 0:20:41.320 So this is what they put aboard the Pioneer plaque, 0:20:41.480 --> 0:20:45.919 naked man and woman line drawing, um, very impressive. And 0:20:45.960 --> 0:20:51.560 then the one of the most ingenious two dimensional maps 0:20:51.640 --> 0:20:55.680 anyone's ever devised that could be used anywhere in the universe. Yeah, 0:20:55.680 --> 0:20:58.680 and this was a little dry run for what would 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:02.439 what would next? Which are the Golden records and maybe 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:04.920 we take a break now and then talk about those. 0:21:05.320 --> 0:21:40.560 We take a break now, all right, let's do it. Okay, 0:21:40.640 --> 0:21:44.320 So Chuck, we took our break and we're back and 0:21:45.240 --> 0:21:47.920 the there was one other little kind of test run. 0:21:48.359 --> 0:21:53.560 Carl Sagan got to work on something called the Leggios Lagos. 0:21:54.280 --> 0:21:58.800 I'm gonna go with Lagos Laser Geodynamic Satellite UM, which 0:21:58.800 --> 0:22:00.359 was a satellite, and he was like, is going to 0:22:00.400 --> 0:22:02.320 be kind of coolest thing will be in orbit around 0:22:02.320 --> 0:22:04.920 Earth for eight point four million years. I'm gonna leave 0:22:04.960 --> 0:22:07.520 a little, a little, a little hello. How do you 0:22:07.560 --> 0:22:10.639 do to any any civilization who might find it millions 0:22:10.640 --> 0:22:12.800 of years from now? And so this thing has an 0:22:12.840 --> 0:22:17.720 inscription of Pangaea from I think two hundred and eighty million, 0:22:17.760 --> 0:22:21.000 two hundred and sixty eight million years ago, the the 0:22:21.119 --> 0:22:24.359 arrangement of the continents today during human time, and he 0:22:24.440 --> 0:22:28.160 very ingeniously indicates this by having that hand Remember the 0:22:28.200 --> 0:22:31.879 man with his hand up and gesture, friendly gesture. He 0:22:32.000 --> 0:22:35.800 places that next to the current UM arrangement, and then 0:22:35.880 --> 0:22:38.639 what the continents will look like eight point four million 0:22:38.720 --> 0:22:41.920 years from now when Lagos is going to come back 0:22:41.960 --> 0:22:44.080 down to Earth. So this is kind of like a 0:22:44.440 --> 0:22:46.960 just another cool little side diversion that I think he 0:22:47.000 --> 0:22:50.359 did for fun. Yeah, so he's he's got these little 0:22:50.440 --> 0:22:55.199 dry runs going on. By the time the voyager comes along, 0:22:55.720 --> 0:22:58.840 he's like, you know what, UM, this is the mid 0:22:58.920 --> 0:23:02.280 to late seventies. We need to really get a better 0:23:02.359 --> 0:23:05.720 message out there and let everyone know who we are 0:23:05.960 --> 0:23:08.880 as humans. So one thing we really want to do 0:23:09.160 --> 0:23:14.040 is put pieces of culture music. He got together with 0:23:14.080 --> 0:23:18.280 Timothy Ferris, who worked for Rolling Stone magazine wrote about 0:23:18.560 --> 0:23:21.680 music and space stuff for Rolling Stone. He was part 0:23:21.680 --> 0:23:24.280 of the project, and they said, yeah, music has definitely 0:23:24.280 --> 0:23:27.000 got to be in there. We need to put some 0:23:27.040 --> 0:23:31.200 classical music because, like, anyone should be able to hear 0:23:31.200 --> 0:23:34.520 classical music and understand the mathematical beauty that's going on there, 0:23:35.119 --> 0:23:37.760 even even if like the they chose that because even 0:23:37.800 --> 0:23:40.760 if aliens don't have ears or any way to hear it, 0:23:41.040 --> 0:23:43.399 if they understand math, they can kind of translate it 0:23:43.400 --> 0:23:45.080 and be like, wow, this is pretty neat what these 0:23:45.080 --> 0:23:49.720 people did with this math. Hopefully. Yeah, so Frank Drake 0:23:49.800 --> 0:23:52.560 is on board again the unsung genius of this stuff, 0:23:53.359 --> 0:23:55.080