Voyager 1

Today, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are among humanity’s greatest efforts to send our most treasured knowledge into space: a gold record containing The Sounds of Earth. At a distance of 11 billion miles from the Sun, recorded on August 25, 2012, Voyager 1 had crossed the heliosphere, according to NASA, followed by Voyager 2 in 2018. Their current mission is to measure interstellar magnetic fields, particles, and plasma waves.

These ancient artifacts float through space, collecting and sending data, while carrying with them a record of what our world sounds like into the emptiness beyond. This is humanity striving to understand life at all costs, while also wishing to share our thoughts, perspectives, and existence.

Our inventions are not only meant to test us and deepen our understanding of the world, but they are also reflections of our spirit. Surprisingly, these incredible feats of human innovation often lack careful documentation of something as simple as how many man-hours it took to build them. The progress, labor, and care behind a project are just as important as the result or its intended use.

We do not even know exactly how the pyramids were built. That oversight, the failure to preserve the instructions, matters deeply. It is like losing the manual to an IKEA desk: the desk itself matters, but the instructions may matter even more. Yes, desks are important. These pieces of furniture become the foundation for many of our greatest innovations, from the ordinary to the catastrophic, even something like the nuclear bomb. To lose the instructions for building even a simple desk would be devastating.

I know that sounds silly, but the point remains: the process, the knowledge, and the preserved steps behind creation are often just as valuable as the creation itself. 

So today, we will know a little more about the magnetic waves traveling through the great beyond. Furthermore, let us never forget to record our process for the next form of life that may want to understand where we left off, or where we might have gone wrong.

Fortunately, data is stored in many computers around the world—microchips made of billions of intricate bits, dents, and layers that preserve everything from the profound to the absurd, even our beloved Lil Jon’s “Freak-a-Leek,” which is hilariously worth preserving. Throughout history, many men and women have dedicated much of their spirit to creating the basic necessities of today.

Thankfully Voyager 1 and 2 thought this threw and sent it with binary instructions and mathematic formulas to decode on how to use the device and receive a glimpse into our world. 

You can currently listen to Sounds of Earth on SoundCloud , I know right lol  !