It has recently come to our attention—and it may be news to others—that the Golden Record created to accompany the Voyager space probe missions with the potential of bringing the sounds of Earth to alien auditory organs, is available for any terrestrial human listener equipped with a phonograph. (The ETs were expected to reinvent that particular wheel.) The recording has been available commercially on Earth since 2017.
The probes were launched nearly 45 years ago each with a 12-inch, gold-plated copper disk designed to endure a billion years of space travel. The project to bring this anthology of Earth sounds to Earth listeners was the focus of a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign launched five years ago. With seed funding, OZMA Records issued the recordings in a box set that is still available on their website ozmarecords.com for $98, though prices on other sites vary.
The Voyager Interstellar Record was compiled by a team led by Carl Sagan, and produced by science journalist Timothy Ferris, who contributed an essay to the accompanying book. The set includes the book with two CDs of all the audio content and all the images that were encoded in analog on the record, scanned from a set of original slides. Also included are images beamed bac
