NASA lets you listen to sounds meant for aliens

Sent off with the Voyager spacecraft in 1977, the phonograph recording (which is actually on multiple records) is meant to be a hodgepodge sampling of what life is like on Earth.

A gold record ready to be attached to a Voyager space probe, USA, circa 1977.

If anyone wants to listen to sounds of NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe’s “golden record”, here is a golden opportunity as the American space agency has put them online for free streaming at SoundCloud. Round-trip communication with Voyager 2 takes about 30 hours. The Voyager traveled past various planets like Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune and over the edge of interstellar space.

SoundCloud will enable the users to upload, record, promote, and share their originally-created sounds that are included in the “Golden Record”.

Among the audio uploaded by NASA are “greetings to the universe” in 55 different languages – available on the NASA website – and several ambient earthly and human-generated sounds – the “murmurs of Earth” – including barking dogs, rain and wind, and even a crying baby.

The sound quality’s not going to give any aliens out there an indication that Earth is home to any audiophiles, but the selection does offer a nice sample of how humanity – as curated by Carl Sagan – felt it should represent itself to the stars.

Currently, the two Voyagers continue to travel in outer space.

NASA has released the golden record featured in the Voyager missions during the 1970s to the public for download and streaming.

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