We decoded NASA’s messages to aliens by hand

In 1977, twin golden records were sent into space on the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft. Still sailing through space at nearly 60,000 km per hour, the records contain sound, songs, and images from earth. But how did NASA include images on an analog record? Here, we decoded the audio, and see the images the way that aliens were intended to see them.

Video by: Cory Zapatka, William Poor, Sophie Erickson
Graphics: Alex Parkin
Audio: Andrew Marino
Executive Producers: Nilay Patel, Eleanor Donovan
Director of Audience Development: Ruben Salvadori
Social Media Manager: Dilpreet Kainth
General Manager: Stephen Belser
Network Development: Sarah Bishop Woods
Thanks to: Alessandra Potenza, Ron Barry

Special thanks to Ron Barry for walking us through his own audio decoding process, which got us excited in the story over a year ago. You can read about his own adventure and watch his process produce results in real-time in his own video in the links below:

Link to Manuel’s code on GitHub:

Link to the full audio data:

[VergeScience]

What images or sounds would you send to aliens?

[chachcadi]

Alien 1: why are there so many weird symbols?
Alien 2: Did you think they were going to speak English like us?

[milkman]

Golden Record be like: "John has 2 apples, calculate the mass of the Sun"

[Sda-vhor]

Government: sends Golden discs to space
Alien government: hides it from their public

[GmodAdict]

The way I’ve always seen the Golden Record isn’t “a message to the stars” but more a “If we are here no longer, we were still here”

[Julio-wrpz]

Alien: "What do you think this is?"
Other Alien: "I don't know, let me open Excel real quick."

[geraldsittly]

- Aliens find disc
- Aliens didn't figure out how to decode
- Aliens google for decoding methods
- Aliens watch this on youtube

[Jo.kinnnn]

The aliens after finding this: *Hey doesn't this look like the Golden Disc we sent a thousand of years ago?*

[Silversorcerer]

I get the distinct feeling that he intended the record to be like a time capsule. We're intended to discover it again after we get very advanced at space travel and be reminded of how we once were.

Alien finding the Golden Disc : "Awesome, free gold!"
*melts the disc*

[Leafyu]

Plot twist: this ends up on a planet where there are other humans and it becomes that planet's biggest mystery.

[TheFockingTeam]

"Easy to understand" with 3 guys from earth explaining the instructions.

[eclipse]

Its so insane how someone actually knew how to create this disc, just every single tiny thing with the very limited amount of tech for the time is so impressive

[mont]

this is the hardest easter egg so far in the universe

[colony]

Nasa creates a map were earth is, aliens visits, military shoots its down
Aliens: man it was a trap

[bgsbrito]

1. Aliens find disc
2. Aliens find earth
3. Sell it to pawn stars
4. Fly away

[joshuekz]

Imagine in the future if the aliens that found the record managed to decode it, and when they arrive to our system, the sun would already be a red giant and the earth was eaten by it, that will be depressing.

[rastari]

NASA lowkey tryna promote they mixtape and give them a soundcloud link

[fishermanlad]

Imagine if an alien race sent us a “golden record”, but we were only evolved into cavemen

[LoganCovers]

It's quite ironic that this message meant for other alien species can't even be read by 99% of the species that made it.