The Voyager Golden Record contains 116 images and a variety of sounds. The items for the record, which is carried on both the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft, were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University. Included are natural sounds (including some made by animals), musical selections from different cultures and eras, spoken greetings in 55 languages, human sounds like footsteps and laughter, and printed messages from U.S. President Jimmy Carter and U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.
Greetings The first audio section contains a spoken greeting in English from Secretary-General of the United Nations Kurt Waldheim.
The second audio section ("Greetings in 55 Languages") contains spoken greetings in 55 languages. The original plan was to use greetings made by United Nations delegates, but various problems with these recordings led to new recordings being made at Cornell University by people from the foreign-language departments. The number of native speakers of these 55 languages combined (excluding L2 speakers) is over 4.7 billion people, comprising over 65% of the world population. It includes four Chinese languages (marked with **), twelve South Asian languages (marked #) and five ancient languages (marked §), listed here in alphabetical order:
Akkadian§ Amoy** (Southern Min/Hokkien) Ancient Greek§ Arabic (Modern Standard) Aramaic Armenian Bengali# Burmese Czech Dutch English French Ganda German Gujarati# Hebrew Hindi# Hittite§ Hungarian Ila (Zambia) Indonesian Italian Japanese Kannada# Korean Latin§ Mandarin** Marathi# Nepali# Nguni Nyanja Oriya# Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi# Quechua Rajasthani# Romanian Russian Serbian Sinhala# Sotho Spanish Sumerian§ Swedish Telugu# Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu# Vietnamese Welsh Wu** (Shanghainese) Yue** (Cantonese)
This is a list of the recorded greetings in order of appearance.
Time Language Speaker Original English translation 0:00:00 Sumerian David I. Owen () May all be well. 0:00:04 Ancient Greek Frederick M. Ahl () Greetings to you, whoever you are. We come in friendship to those who are friends. 0:00:11 Portuguese Janet Sternberg Peace and happiness to everyone. 0:00:14 Cantonese Stella Lau Fessler How's everyone? Wish you peace, health and happiness. 0:00:19 Akkadian David I. Owen May all be very well. 0:00:22 Russian Maria Rubinova () Greetings! I welcome you! 0:00:25 Thai Ruchira Mendiones () Hello friends from farland. We in this land have sent you warm greeting to you all. 0:00:32 Arabic Amahl Shakh () Our greetings to the friends amongst the stars. We wish that time would unite us. 0:00:38 Romanian Sanda Huffman Regards to everyone. 0:00:42 French Alexandra Littauer Hello, everyone. 0:00:45 Burmese Maung Myo Lwin () Are you well? 0:00:48 Hebrew David I. Owen () Peace. 0:00:50 Spanish Erik J. Beukenkamp Hello and greetings to everyone. 0:00:54 Indonesian Ilyas Harun Good night, ladies and gentlemen. Goodbye and see you next time. 0:00:59 Kechua (Quechua) Fredy Roncalla Hello to everybody from this Earth, in Quechua language. 0:01:04 Punjabi Jatinder N. Paul / () Welcome home. It is a pleasure to receive you. 0:01:07 Hittite David I. Owen Greetings / Hail! (literally "in goodwill") 0:01:08 Bengali Subrata Mukherjee () Hello! Let there be peace everywhere. 0:01:11 Latin Frederick M. Ahl Greetings to you, whoever you are; we have good will towards you and bring peace across space. 0:01:19 Aramaic David I. Owen or or () Hello (literally "peace") 0:01:22 Dutch Joan de Boer Dear/sincere greetings to everyone. 0:01:24 German Renate Born Warm greetings to everyone. 0:01:27 Urdu Salma Alzal () Peace be upon you. We, the inhabitants of this earth, send our greetings to you. 0:01:37 Vietnamese Trần Trọng Hải Sincerely sending greetings to you. 0:01:40 Turkish Peter Ian Kuniholm Dear Turkish-speaking friends, may the honors of the morning be upon your heads. 0:01:45 Japanese Mari Noda () Hello (literally "How is your day?"), how are you? 0:01:48 Hindi Omar Alzal () Greetings from the inhabitants of the earth. 0:01:51 Welsh Frederick M. Ahl Good health to you now and forever. 0:01:54 Italian Debby Grossvogel Many greetings and wishes. 0:01:57 Sinhala Kamal de Abrew () Wish You a Long Life. 0:02:00 Zulu (isiZulu) Fred Dube We greet you, great ones. We wish you longevity. 0:02:05 Sotho (Sesotho) Fred Dube We greet you, O great ones. 0:02:08 Wu Yvonne Meinwald Best wishes to you all. 0:02:12 Armenian Araxy Terzian () To all those who exist in the universe, greetings. 0:02:19 Korean Soon Hee Shin () Hello (literally "Are you peaceful?" or "Be peaceful") 0:02:22 Polish Maria Nowakowska-Stycos Welcome, beings from beyond the world. 0:02:25 Nepali Durga Prashad Ojha () Wishing you a peaceful future from the earthlings. 0:02:29 Mandarin Chinese Liang Ku How's everyone? We all very much wish to meet you, if you're free please come and visit. 0:02:35 Ila Saul Moobola We wish all of you well. 0:02:38 Swedish Gunnel Almgren Schaar Greetings from a computer programmer in the small university town of Ithaca on (the) planet Earth. 0:02:45 Nyanja Saul Moobola How are all you people of other planets? 0:02:48 Gujarati Radhekant Dave () Greetings from a human being of the Earth. Please contact. 0:03:03 Ukrainian Andrew Cehelsky () We are sending greetings from our world, wishing you happiness, health and many years. 0:03:09 Persian Eshagh Samehyeh () Greetings to the residents of far skies. Human Beings are members of a whole, In creation of one essence and soul, If one member is inflicted with pain, Other members uneasy will remain. 0:03:22 Serbian Milan Mihailo Smiljanić () We wish you all the best, from our planet. 0:03:25 Oriya Raghaba Prasada Sahu () Greetings to the inhabitants of the universe from the third planet Earth of the star Sun. 0:03:34 Ganda (Luganda) Elijah Mwima-Mudeenya Greetings to all peoples of the universe. God give you peace always. 0:03:38 Marathi Arati Pandit () Greetings. The people of the Earth send their good wishes and hope you find good fortune in this life. 0:03:47 Amoy (Southern Min/Hokkien) Margaret Sook Ching See Gebauer ( ) Friends from space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time. 0:03:55 Hungarian (Magyar) Elizabeth Bilson We are sending greetings in the Hungarian language to all peace-loving beings on the Universe. 0:04:01 Telugu Prasad Kodukula () Greetings. Best wishes from Telugu-speaking people. 0:04:05 Czech Václav Kostroun Dear Friends, we wish you the best. 0:04:08 Kannada (Kanarese) Shrinivasa K. Upadhyaya () Greetings. On behalf of Kannada-speaking people, 'good wishes'. 0:04:12 Rajasthani Mool C. Gupta () Hello to everyone. We are happy here and you be happy there. 0:04:18 English Nick Sagan Hello from the children of planet Earth.
Sounds The next audio section is devoted to the "sounds of Earth" that include:
"Music of the Spheres" – Johannes Kepler's Harmonices Mundi realized by Laurie Spiegel Volcanoes, Earthquake, Thunder Mud Pots Wind, Rain, Surf Crickets, Frogs Birds, Hyena, Elephant, Whale Chimpanzee Wind Wild Dog Heartbeat, Footsteps, Laughter (Carl Sagan's) The First Tools
Tame Dog Herding Sheep, Blacksmith, Sawing Tractor, Riveter Morse Code, Ships (precisely, a ship's horn) Horse and Cart Train (specifically the bell and whistle of a steam locomotive) Tractor, Bus, Auto F-111 Flyby, Saturn V Lift-off (Apollo 15) Kiss, Mother and Child Life Signs, Pulsar
Included within the Sounds of Earth audio portion of the Golden Record is a track containing the inspirational message per aspera ad astra in Morse code. Translated from Latin, it means 'through hardships to the stars.'
Brainwaves The life signs included on the record were an hour-long recording of the heartbeat and brainwaves of Ann Druyan, who would later marry Carl Sagan. The hour-long recording was compressed into the span of a minute to be able to fit into the record. In the epilogue of the 1997 book Billions and Billions, she describes the experience:
On February 12, 2010, an interview with Ann Druyan was aired on NPR during which the above was explained in more detail.
Music Following the section on the sounds of Earth, there is an eclectic 90-minute selection of music from many cultures, including Eastern and Western classics. The selections include: