Nov 01, 2018 06:00:00

Explain how an alien deciphers 'Golden Records' launched into space with the Voyager

" Golden Record ", created for the grand purpose of conveying the record of human civilization towards extraterrestrial intelligent life form, has jumped out into space with the Voyager and continues to advance in space now. The Verge explains cryptanalysis hints drawn on the disk label by engineers at the time in order to have the speech and images recorded in the Golden Records decrypted by extraterrestrial life forms.

We decoded NASA's messages to aliens by hand - YouTube

In 1977 NASA produced "Golden Records" for Voyager 1, No. 2. On the assumption of reaching extraterrestrial intelligent life forms, we recorded information on the earth and activity records of intelligent life forms on a gold-plated copper disc.

The Golden Record is attached to the body of the Voyager and is struck out into space, and it is thought that it is moving in the space that is furthest away from the Earth now.

The information recorded in the Golden Record is music and image information born on the earth.

Voyager will communicate with each other until 2030, but there is no means of communication to the earth. In hopes that Golden Records installed in both machines will be discovered in extraterrestrial intelligent life forms, the Voyager goes through outer space at a high speed of 60,000 kilometers per hour.

Along with the explanation that "the information recorded in the Golden Record is like this", the electronic sound was made to flow. Not only music but also image images are recorded as sounds.

Genuine Golden Record was gold-plated on such a copper thin disc.

On the surface of the disc, various "symbols" related to information in the disc are drawn.

A symbol mark that you do not understand at first glance is a "hint" that will help intelligent intelligent life forms understand the information inside.

John Romberg, who served as the design director of Golden Records.

Mr. Romberg says that the elements required for Golden Record hints were "to be understood as easily as possible" and "to be as clear as possible".

This symbol drawn on the disk indicates the position of the Earth in outer space. It seems that only this symbol does not decipher the contents of the disc.

All other information is in order to decode the recorded audio information.

Although the recorded music data is straight information, it can not be reproduced correctly unless there is information such as the rotation speed of the disk.

It is impossible for an alien to be able to reproduce the electronic sound if it is an earthling. Therefore, it is necessary to express the condition to rotate the disk.

You may think that image data is recorded in a digital format such as JPEG.

However, it seems that even the computer system of the Voyager was a tremendously small information volume of 69 KB (kilobytes).

"In 1977, there was no technology to record pictures on analog discs"

Therefore, NASA decided to record the information as "audio wave (voice wave)". It was requested that extraterrestrial intelligent life forms should be able to decode this audio data into other information such as images.

Two circles drawn on the edge of the disk mean "hydrogen" atoms. It describes the most fundamental elements filled in outer space.

" Blue moon occurs because the spin direction of hydrogen molecules changes," Professor Jacqueline Van Grocom of Columbia University. Hydrogen is an important element which can not be separated from the universe, it is a common premise common not only to earthlingers but also to aliens.

The wavelength of the spectral line radiated from a hydrogen atom typified by its outer space is 21 centimeters.

In short, it is a radio wave with a frequency of 1420 MHz. And, 1420 MHz is about 0.7 ns. This "0.7 nanosecond" number is an important number related to deciphering the numerous symbols drawn in the Golden Record.

For example, symbols drawn in different places of the Golden Record are drawn in binary numbers.

Applying 0.7 nano to this number will result in "3229 seconds" (about 54 minutes), which is the same as the time of playing the golden record.

It is "3.59 seconds" when multiplying the binary number on the circumference of the symbol drawing the Golden Record by 0.7 nanoseconds, which means that it represents the time it takes for the record to rotate a full turn.

Rotating the Golden Record at this rotation speed will play the greetings of earthlings recorded in the language of 55 countries.

When you align the needle to the place of music, the music will be played as it is. In other places, various sounds on the earth such as sea and birds, thunder, whale barks are played.

Turning the disc upside down ...

Electronic sounds like noise are coming out from the back. It is said that these are image images.

A hint drawn on the disk surface, the following symbols produce images from sound waves.

Again, by applying "0.7 nanoseconds" it is shown that the section is divided every "0.008 seconds".

And each section corresponds to 512 scanning lines, and when arranging, image image appears. They seem to be methods adopted in television broadcasting at the time.

Although I can not understand the mechanism of the scanning line, I try to convert the sound to the image for the time being.

Using the free software "Audacity", cut off the peak of each sound wave every 0.008 seconds.

The obtained data is output as a CSV file.

Repeat this operation 512 times and the data outputted over 12 hours in total ......

It became "yen" like this.

What is important here is not "yen". The fact that "speech can be converted into a simple circle image" is an important point.

It is said that extraterrestrial intelligent life forms will be aware that other data can be imaged if it can convert sound to image (circle) while keeping simple shape. In this way it is urging you to decode the remaining 114 images.