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Voyager Golden Record, previously for aliens only, now available on earth

A compilation of music created as a way to communicate with alien life-forms, the Voyager Golden Record, which was curated by the astronomer Carl Sagan and features music ranging from Javanese gamelan Music to Chuck Berry will be available for the first time in 40 years for music fans.

News Desk (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Thu, August 24, 2017

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Voyager Golden Record, previously for aliens only, now available on earth This NASA file photo taken on August 3, 2002 shows an artist's rendition of the Voyager spacecraft. NASA is seeking suggestions from the public for a message to beam far, far out into space to the probe Voyager 1 in time for the 40th anniversary of its launch. The US space agency wants input via Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and other social media, and the public will vote on what short message we on earth should send to the intrepid, overachieving little space traveler. NASA said on its website that people have until August 15, 2017 to make submissions of a maximum of 60 characters. NASA, its Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Voyager team will cull them, and the public will vote to pick the winner to send toward Voyager 1 on September 5, 2017. (Agence France -Presse/NASA)

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compilation of music created as a way to communicate with alien life-forms, the Voyager Golden Record, which was curated by the astronomer Carl Sagan and features music ranging from Javanese Court Music to Chuck Berry will be available for the first time in 40 years for music fans.

The end result of a Kickstarter campaign in 2016, the compilation will be available in a deluxe vinyl boxset and 2-CD set, released by Ozma Records. The deluxe 3xLP box set, priced at US$98, contains three translucent gold vinyl, a Voyager trajectory slipmat, a full-colour 96-page softcover book containing all images form the original record.

The 3xLP box set of the Voyager Golden Record will be available on September through the California-based Ozma Records.
The 3xLP box set of the Voyager Golden Record will be available on September through the California-based Ozma Records. (Courtesy of Ozma Records/Ozma Records)

The compilation was reissued as part of celebration of the 40th anniversary of Voyager 1 and 2’s launch.

Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977, and a sister ship, Voyager 2, actually went up about two weeks earlier. The mission of both was study the solar system's giant, gaseous outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Traveling with Voyager 1 was the only copy of the recording.

Voyager 1 probe is now almost 13 billion miles from Earth. It is the most distant human-made object ever. And it is the first spacecraft to enter what is known as interstellar space.

Sagan came up with the idea to produce the record as an artifact that could be accessed by intelligent life out there in the universe.

Some of greatest music from different cultures were stored on the record, including Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F Major as the first musical track, followed by Ketawang Puspowarno, a gamelan orchestra recorded at the Yogyakarta Pakulaman Palace in the early 1970s.

"Those of us who were involved in making the Golden Record assumed that it would soon be commercially released, but that didn’t happen. Carl tried to get labels interested..but he had to deal with “internecine warfare in the record industry," producer of the original album Tim Ferris said in the album's liner note.

 

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