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When Voyager was launched some 35 years ago, President Carter made a speech which included the following:
We cast this message into the cosmos ... Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some — perhaps many — may have inhabited planets and space faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message: We are trying to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope some day, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of Galactic Civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe.
My question: is it really wise to say that we want to "join a community of Galactic Civilizations"? Couldn't this come back to harm us, particularly if we (presumably) were the far inferior party in any such relationship? Also, was it best to represent the world as being so horrible in 1977 that people had to hope that they could "survive our time"? Who was Carter's speech writer, anyway?
It is probably safe to assume that yes, there are other civilizations and that yes, they are probably not friendly. For some reason, I tend to think the Universe is a lot more Hobbesian than anybody want to admit.Luckily, it is hundreds of thousands if not millions of years before Voyager gets anywhere near a neighboring star. We ill most likely be starfaring ourselves before then. I am reminded of the first Star Trek movie and V'Ger.
Well, not to mention that there's no guarantee that any other civilization could understand what was contained on the “Golden Record” that was sent aboard Voyager. Apparently it contains binary code, which is presumably universally understandable. I would love to read about the discussions that went on during the meetings (with Carl Sagan leading the way) about what types of messages they wanted to put on the Record. They had to decide what were the most important and basic things they wanted to tell a distant civilization based upon what they knew in 1977.
Voyager Golden Record fx[see page for license], by Voyager_Golden_Record.jpg: created byderivative work: Xession (Voyager_Golden_Record.jpg), from Wikimedia Commons
