just Beamu

I don't really know why I'm putting this into words but I felt like it so hear I go. I've always had odd feelings in regards to humanity. We can simultaneously create things of beauty or destroy needlessly. So I tend to find incredibly positive romanticizations of humanity obnoxious. Yet I can't help but have a strange feeling when I read about the objects we've sent into the depths of space never to return. I don't exactly know how to describe that feeling. Realistically they likely won't be found by anybody due to the speeds and distances involved. Even if they are it'll likely be so long from now that humanity has been wiped out or changed completely. What I'm referring to are the representations of humanity that we've shot out into space in the slim chance that anybody ever finds them. The first of these things I'm referring to is called the Pioneer Plaque. There are two of them.

When devising them the biggest problem they had was creating something that could be understood by beings with senses, measurements and languages completely unlike any of our own. So they decided to use math and physics. Both of these should be constant regardless of where in the universe any recipient might be. There are drawings of a naked man and woman to represent people. Behind them is a drawing of the spacecraft for size comparison. This actually caused a ton of controversy when it was put on their due to the nudity.

Along with the drawings of people, there are pulsar coordinates and the earth shown in relation to them in order to give some idea of where we are located. It also has symbols to represent two hydrogen atoms. Since these are the most common form of matter in the universe it's hoped that anything intelligent enough to find it would be able to understand it's significance. There are various other bits of information in binary. I found the later remnant to be more interesting.

There exists two golden records on Voyager 1 and 2. Voyager 1 happens to be the fastest moving spacecraft we've ever created. Included with these golden records is a stylus and a visual diagram showing how to use it. There is binary instructions indicating how long the record lasts and how fast the stylus should move along the record. On this record is a variety of images showing different places in our solar system as well as simple human life.

Along with these images are greetings in 55 different languages. There are a variety of different sounds on the record as well. Much of the record is taken up by 27 different songs from around the world in a variety of genres. I find it beautiful in a strange way that one of the songs on it, Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground, was chosen as the human expression of loneliness. All of these little bits of humankind will fly farther and farther from the earth, forever lonely in space. These remnants of humanity will likely outlast the actual human race. Unless it gets destroyed by some stray rock in the empty void of space or we send something else like it into space, those plaques and records will likely be the last remnants to show that humans ever existed. It elicits a strange sense of sadness and awe in me. I still don't know how to describe it. Nor do I know why I felt the need to write this down. Feel free to wave this off as the ramblings of some random person on the internet. Though you should give the record a listen at least.