I recently read an article is about space ships Voyager one and Voyager two.. Both were launched 35 years ago. They were believed to have a life expectancy of about five years. Much to our everlasting joy, they're still going. They are so far away, like 15 light hours or so, that their signals are measured in femtowatts which is an unimaginally small signal.
The article detailed the travels of both. Those vehicles have discovered things that we did not know that we did not know. Each vehicle contains a gold plated copper disc like a very large cd disc. It is expected to be useable for nearly a billion years. Instructions for playback are included in its enclosure. Part of the instructions tell the proper playback speed which is defined in transition time of the hydrogen atom. The disc contains 55 languages, 90 minutes of music ranging from the bell pure tones of pygmy girls singing in the Zaire forest, Beethovens Cavatino, to Chuck Berry's; Johnny Be Goode. The disc suggests that however primitive and ignorant we were, something in us was expansive enough to consider that we were not the only scientists in the universe, nor its only explorers.
Carl Sagan was involved in this early space exploration effort. In 1990, Voyager one looked back to take photos of all our suns planets. The earth took just one pixel. That was Sagans "Pale Blue Dot". He wrote: "Think of all the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emporers so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot"
The article did not mention that the NASA scientists were unconcerned about religious backlash. Messages to another possible intelligent life form are not the stuff of the evangelicals.... Unless the life form is jesus One more thought crossed my mind because of the verified vastness of this universe.... Bible god was focused on a most incredibly small project when he made the earth.
All those cosmic mysteries out there are yet to be understood or even recognized. I thought of this Voyager saga and the things that they might help us learn after reading the OP in another thread. The writer asked what percentage of everything did we as individuals think we know. A devious, sophomoric, pissy question, but it made me think.
