The Golden records on the Voyager Spacecraft? WHY????

[GrimSleeper]

http://en.wikipedia.o...Voyager_Golden_Record

Last night we was at the local rubadub and this conversation came up and to be quite frank thoroughly enraged me to the point that I ended up walking out of the pub! I've been an avid reader of this site for quite a while and deemed this a perfect point for which to make my debut entry with.
Sending golden records into space in CASE there are aliens.....Don't they know how ridiculously crazy that sounds? Oh so we then maybe should blast one into deep space in CASE there's a god? Roll a couple to end of the garden in CASE there are fairies? No no no lets leave one on top of the chimney for father Christmas shall we? IF there were aliens wouldn't they have made face to contact by now and would either be laughing and pointing at s for our low IQ's and unnecessary anger and warring ways to our fellow man or would have enslaved us and would now be probing us with a manor of sharp hot and pointed objects by now?
I like facts and use this as weight to maintain momentum behind any large debate i may be rolling towards whoever I talk to but this "Aliens in the stars" lark has got to stop yes or no?
Anyway I'm back off to the rubadub as we have a "God squad" member who will be partaking in todays debate which will be obviously Is there or isn't there a god.....I can feel my blood pressure rising already.
Bye all catch you later.

[boxtops]

Absolutely Eddie - we don't know but the likelihood of "us" being the only sentient beings in the whole universe is surely very small. Other beings might be less advanced than we are, or be such streets ahead of us that we are not worth considering. Bit like us looking at an anthill - interesting, civilised, heirarchies, but not rocket science.

[BIGDOGY]

There is certinly life out there, but the chance of it being inteligent is remote.
The reason I beleive this is due to the number of life forms on earth and only we are sentient.
Also the complex evolutionary path we traveled to evolve out brains is specific to our world and would not be duplicatable.

[heathfield]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox.

[Rasman]

The Drake equation predicts between 10-50,000 intelligent civilisations out there in our Galaxy alone.

[ludwig]

If they are found let's hope the aliens have got a record player.

[naomi24]

And Rasman, I suspect the Drake equation isn't too far from the truth. Even though it appears GrimSleeper joined AB and was banned within minutes, he has raised an interesting subject. I love people who say things like 'IF there were aliens wouldn't they have made face to [face?] contact by now//. Ahhh .... the limitations of our intellect .... and of our expectations ....

[Buenchico]

Imagine you're with a child playing on a sandy beach. Think how many grains of sand there are in his bucket. Now think of how many grains of sand there are on that beach. Now that you're starting to get the picture, expand that to think about how many grains of sand there are on all the beaches in the UK. Lastly, extend that to think about how many grains of sand there are on every beach in the entire world. Now square that number and you're finally getting close to the number of stars in the universe.

It's as mad to assume that intelligent life can only exist on one insignificant planet (revolving around an extremely insignificant star) as it is to assume that there's something amazingly different about any particular grain of sand,which couldn't be replicated by another grain of sand somewhere else.

Further it's madness (and immensely arrogant) to assume that our life form is anywhere near to the 'top of the pile'. There are probably millions of other life forms who would look at us in the same way that we see an amoeba.

However I'll happily agree that there's very little chance of us ever making contact with any of those life forms, simply because of the distances involved. Voyagers 1 & 2 have been travelling for 33 years so far, and they won't even reach the edge of our own solar system for several more years yet. If they were ever to be discovered by another life form it's likely to be so far into the future that our own star (the Sun) will have ceased to exist millions of years earlier.

Chris

[jackthehat]

Not only that, I believe gold was used as it is inert and ought to withstand the strains and forces of space-travel.......arriving at its destination (!?) largely uncorrupted.

[DaisyNonna]

Can we afford it?

[jackthehat]

Well they were sent off in 1977..............so I think they've probably been paid for by now.

[naomi24]

I agree with most of what you say Chris, but .......

//........there's very little chance of us ever making contact with any of those life forms//

because that completely overlooks the possibility that they might make contact with us - or even that the may have done so already. (And I'm not talking about crop circles and alien abductions here). Let us not limit the possibilities that life may hold to our current knowledge. Man has a lot to learn.

[R1Geezer]

There are definately aliens, we will definately never see them or communicate in any way. End of.

[R1Geezer]

Om space terms Voyager hasn't even made it to next door, yet, I agree the whole golden records thing is folly.

[ludwig]

I think people are missing the point. It's symbolic more than anything. Not actually a realistic attempt to make contact with aliens, but more like saying 'Look we're sending this thing out into space, we really ought to put a label on it saying where it's from, just in case anybody bumps into it'.

Waste of money? - not really. they've already spent 600 squillion quid on getting the Voyager project off the ground, a couple of hundred more getting a plaque and an LP engraved is neither here nor there.

[naomi24]

Ludwig is right of course. It is symbolic - but you never know - someone might just bump into it.

Geezer, and still you don't understand why it's foolhardy to make such definite statements.

[R1Geezer]

Naomi, don't get me wrong, I'd be delighted to be proved wrong, but when it takes 8 years even at the speed of light to say hi to our closest neighbours, you must see what I'm getting at. I know we regularly have this debate, but even at warp 10 it takes 10000 years to cross the galaxy, can you not see that? Are you really aware of the numbers, the totally mind boggling numbers? I think it's "fool hardy" to hang on to the the idea that we will contact aliens at some point. Accept that the universe is teaming with life all unreachable. There may be parts of the Galaxy where there are mutiple civilasations in the same solar system, so I'm not saying inter alien communication is entirely a non starter. I know Sci Fi dangles tantalising prospects but in the final analysis they are generally flawed.

[naomi24]

Geezer, our nearest neighbour is not 8 light years away but just over 4 - and there are at least 50 others that we know of within 30 light years. We have lots of relatively (sorry 'bout that) close neighbours so who's to say we're going to need to cross to the other side of the galaxy before finding life? Can you possibly imagine where technology may lead us in say, 1,000 years - or 10,000 years? I don't think any of us really can - but at least some of us acknowledge that we'll know a lot more then than we do now. Broaden your horizons Geezer - you're stuck in a rut.

[NazNomad]

I think it's so they can find the message and quickly turn around, realising their journey has been wasted, without the hassle of entering the atmosphere and landing.