Are we deceiving aliens about the reality of life on this planet? Or just ourselves?

In 1977, Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts began their mission. Thirty-five years later, Voyager 1 would make history by becoming the first human-made object to enter interstellar space.

After a brief computer issue arose late last year, Voyager 1 has recently resumed returning data to scientists waiting patiently at a 22½-hour delay on Earth. Not bad, considering that it was with a 46-year delay that news of the mission reached this writer.

The spacecrafts were launched by the Titan-Centaur rocket with the purpose of exploring the planets Jupiter and Saturn. However, for someone whose brain latches to stories, there was a more compelling element to this quest.

Aboard the spacecraft, now more than 15 billion miles from Earth, in what is known as “empty space”, is a 12-inch gold-plated disc. This “Golden Record” is a cosmic time capsule that contains a selection of images, music, greetings and natural sounds.

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According to Nasa, the aim of the record is to “communicate a story of our world to extra-terrestrials”. A tall order. How do you create a single object that says with confidence to a foreign civilisation that, “this is who we are”?

The Golden Record is electroplated in an ultra-pure source of uranium-238. The half-life of this substance is 4.51 billion years. This means that the record may potentially outlive humankind. Serving as an artefact of what human civilisation once was.

Oof, gut-tightening stuff.

The contents of the record were selected for Nasa by a committee chaired by American astronomer Carl Sagan. Accompanying the Golden Record are instructions, mapped out in a symbolic language on how to use the disc. It also includes co-ordinates for planet Earth, should an alien civilisation want to make contact. And why wouldn’t they with the glorious depiction of life on Earth that we have sent their way?

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The disc contains 115 images that are encoded in analogue form. The images represent a diversity of life on Earth, varying from mathematical equations to traffic jams, astronauts floating through space, to a teacher bent over his student. There are images of X-rays, idyllic turquoise sea, a cotton harvest, and diagrams of a foetus and human reproductive systems. After some contention, it was decided that no nudes would be sent to space.

These images are accompanied by a “sound essay” made up of the greetings, music and a selection of “Earth sounds”. The musical selection includes classical music, jazz, a Peruvian wedding song and a Native American “night chant”. Contrary to popular belief, The Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun does not feature.

The Earth sounds include volcanoes, thunderstorms and bubbling mud; the trilling of crickets and the howl of wolves. We hear hyenas and heartbeats, laughter and the pucker of a kiss. There are sounds of fire, Morse code and a mother attending to her upset child.

The greetings come in 55 languages, beginning with Akkadian, which was spoken in Sumer about six thousand years ago, and ending with Wu, a modern Chinese dialect.

They also include a printed message from former UN secretary general Kurt Waldheim that states:

“I send greetings on behalf of the people of our planet. We step out of our Solar System into the Universe, seeking only peace and friendship, to teach if we are called upon, to be taught if we are fortunate. We know full well that our planet and all its inhabitants are but a small part of this immense Universe that surrounds us, and it is with humility and hope that we take this step.”

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While a message from China touchingly asks their “friends of space” if they have eaten.

Sagan notes that the record will be “played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilisations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.”

Indeed, the record does present a hopeful view of life on Earth. But I wonder if Sagan was alive today, how the astronomer and his team might reflect on their choices. I wonder if, like me, they might worry about the extra-terrestrial creatures who, upon digesting the golden disc, may choose to visit this utopia, only to arrive and witness the aspects we had chosen to leave out about life here.

Where are the death rattles, the clunk of amputated limbs or the sound of an infant sucking a dry breast?

Where is the crunch of rubble as parents search for the hand of a missing child?

The cries of grief and desperation or the squeak of a sharpie pen signing a message onto another bomb intended to kill?

Where is the deafening silence or the hollow sound of inaction?

What lovely messages we have sent to space, but are we deceiving extra-terrestrial beings about the reality of life on this planet?

Or perhaps are we simply just deceiving ourselves?