r/AskReddit • u/SkyscraperEnthusiast • Jan 27 '23
If a Voyager 3 were to be launched with an updated version of the golden record, what would you put on the record?
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u/StuckInNov1999 Jan 27 '23
A massive data dump of all social media content from the last decade.
This way any intelligent life in the universe would know to stay well the fuck away from the planet Earth.
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u/SheriffComey Jan 27 '23
The intergalactic governing council would use that data dump as the reason to remove Earth from the galactic equation
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u/Angel_OfSolitude Jan 28 '23
Plot twist, the aliens are even hornier than we are and consider us kindred spirits.
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u/dunalddoodler Jan 27 '23
I don't think that would fit so I would propose something more along the lines of a youtube rewind but for all of the internet and for the last few decades
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u/StuckInNov1999 Jan 27 '23
Or just that YT rewind that starts off with Will Smith. I think that would be enough.
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u/SCViper Jan 27 '23
The top 10 factual reasons for armed conflicts in the past 100 years, from each side of said conflicts.
Watch how fast we get obliterated after that.
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u/Ochebaba Jan 27 '23
Bouncing dvd logo!
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u/ratatard Jan 27 '23
The dark forest hypothesis suggests that record should be empty.
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u/Perfect_Zone_4919 Jan 28 '23
We should put the coordinates for alpha centauri and see how long before that star blinks out.
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u/YourTypicalSensei Jan 28 '23
*Meanwhile at the Kuiper belt, with a suspiciously smooth and reflective droplet-like shape*
"They'll never see this coming"
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u/Kotopause Jan 27 '23
Rickroll on repeat. Nothing else. Nothing else is worthy
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u/VodkaMargarine Jan 27 '23
I love the idea of aliens in the distant future expending years of research to be able to decrypt the mysterious disc that landed from another world, only to get rickrolled.
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u/PlayerH8rsBallz Jan 28 '23
Absolutely nothing.
The Dark Forest is a terrifying concept.
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u/MandoHunter2451 Jan 28 '23
Please elaborate
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u/YourTypicalSensei Jan 28 '23
Essentially, the Dark Forest Theory states that the universe is filled with hostile civilizations that will actively seek to destroy any civilization they stumble across, so to maximize their chances of survival.
Since a first-strike capability would be completely undetectable for the victim civilization, it's pretty easy to wipe out another civilization without them even knowing what hit them.
Hence, the theory states that humanity should not reveal its presence in the universe
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u/YourTypicalSensei Jan 28 '23
Since we could store a lot more information on that disc, I think we should probably send a LOT more information about how humans work, biologically, socially, mentally, etc etc.
We should do everything in our power to present ourselves as coming in peace, and probably have more detailed and higher definition images of our home and our societies
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u/btw_sky_and_earth Jan 28 '23
Ah, a roadmap for hostile aliens to learn how annihilate the human civilization easily.
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u/YuunofYork Jan 28 '23 edited Jan 28 '23
I know everyone likes the idea of these records, but we know so very very much today that makes them irrelevant. We did back in the 70s, too, but the right people weren't asked.
They're not going to find spacefaring civs, if such a thing exists. It will take the Voyagers we've already launched 40,000 years to reach the nearest star system, for one. For another, any linguist will tell you there is no functional way to communicate with a species that doesn't share our biology. Syntax has a biological basis. We're more related to apes and parrots than we'd be to anything from another planet and we can't communicate with them in that way. Human speech without context is just noise, even to speakers of other human languages. You wouldn't have any method for parsing that noise into meaningful units. Or any units at all for that matter since we don't speak with pauses between each word. You wouldn't have the same concept of word. You wouldn't have the intuition, nor very likely the ability to find shared context. SF language exercises in popular culture like Arrival or "Darmok" are just entertainment to us; nobody in relevant academia (physicists are not relevant) believes such efforts would succeed in many tens of generations of trying. Maybe with a lot of lucky convergence and some genetic manipulation involving child subjects over a long period, but even then, total crap shoot, and you'd be living together 24/7, not listening to uncontextualized audio.
So I would refrain from putting any human vocals on a music sampler. It's completely pointless. I'd stick to instrumentals with interesting chord progressions, inversions, something showcasing theory (which is also human-arbitrary, but at least you don't need a shared context to count beats or measure pitch). No songs, just pieces.
Edit: specifically, Rach's Variations on a Theme of Paganini or Elgar's Enigma variations or Bach's Goldberg variations would have a better chance of imparting some of their original artistic meaning.
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u/robertlandrum Jan 28 '23
As Neil deGrasse-Tyson pointed out, our biology is based on the most common elements in the universe, so it stands to reason that there’s other similarly formed biology out there.
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u/YuunofYork Jan 28 '23
You're really not understanding what I'm getting at. The biology necessary wasn't created in the soup 4 billion years ago - it's the precise architecture of the human brain circa 100,000 years ago. That's why a parrot, with all its own innate capacity for communication and the lucky coincidence that it can produce the same phonemes we encode our languages with, will never in million years learn human syntax. Syntax is down to architecture.
The chance is very close to zero for compatible syntax, not inevitable. The chance for a perfect 1:1 of syntax is in fact zero.
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u/Quicksand_Jesus_69 Jan 28 '23
Wow, "uncontextualized", now THERE'S a $5 dollar word...
I guess the adverb of that would be "UNCONTEXTUALIZATION", further complicated by
-al, -ary, -istic, -istically, -alistically, etc...
"...uncontextualizationalaryistically speaking..."
"...Little Billy, would you like to tell the rest of the class why last Friday's surprise spelling quiz was uncontextualizationalaryistical in it's relative nature??..." LMFAO...
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u/Quicksand_Jesus_69 Jan 28 '23
...and interesting chord progressions??... That would have to be Ozzy Osbourne - Diary Of A Madman...
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u/tangcameo Jan 28 '23
Dark Was The Night (or something else from Paris, Texas) by Ry Cooder. Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen. Tom Wait’s Time but the cover by Tori Amos. Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell (orchestral version). Slow Tango by Jane Siberry (or Oh My My).
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u/lunasmith49 Jan 28 '23
I have always thought that the smartest thing we could do as a civilization is to shut down voyayer 1 and 2. why? The human being is a virus (as Smith said) we enslave all the species on the planet and we destroy the resources... imagine this behavior at a galactic level. obviously if there is a more advanced civilization they will surely destroy us (for the good of the galaxy)
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u/CaptainPrower Jan 28 '23
Voyager 3 is to serve no other purpose than to be a distress signal to any intelligent life that might find it.
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u/HugeBMs2022 Jan 27 '23
Make it not a record first of all. No point in aliens thinking we still use archaic crap like records.
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u/voice-of-reason-777 Jan 28 '23
it wasn’t chosen because no one knew any better, it was chosen because in this specific very demanding context, a record is simply the best medium. Relatively simple does not equal archaic, quite the opposite.
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u/AdamBombKelley Jan 27 '23
Records are physical media. A tape, disc, or data file can easily be erased or corrupted, especially when it's being constantly bombarded with radiation. The record will only stop working if it is physically scratched or broken.
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u/Efficient-Twist-43 Jan 27 '23
All Top 69 Memes from 4Chan, Reddit and 9Gag.
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u/MoreRogues Jan 28 '23
Imagine you're an alien and somebody sends you shit from fucking 9gag.
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u/Efficient-Twist-43 Feb 14 '23
Hey atleast facebook is out of the play, they'd build a solid shell of steel around the system if it was in there. Now they only go no contact.
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u/youngmindoldbody Jan 27 '23
3 seconds of me playing the Kazoo, at the very end, then waving good-bye
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u/Nuffsaid98 Jan 28 '23
Some indication that global warming is an issue and that we are not taking it seriously enough.
Mention that we have nuclear weapons.
Pandemic reaction, I.e. plans that are in place and public reaction to having to follow then. Masks, vaccination and so on.
Age profiles , population growth.
Fossil fuel use and abundance/ rarity.
If Aliens arrive and we are extinct it might save them some time.
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u/That-Row-3038 Jan 27 '23
Well, we do want to show to them that we are not a hostile, but technologically advanced society, so I can't think of a better way to do this than cool engineering projects, stuff like the large Hadron collider. Also probably good if we sent them some sort of postcard using a photo of the earth.
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u/AdamBombKelley Jan 27 '23
Just send the album "The Stone Roses"
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u/cmarroquin27 Jan 27 '23
I can only imagine to aliens jamming to "Fools Gold." Heck, I'd give them acid and join them in a heartbeat
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u/AdamBombKelley Jan 27 '23
"What the hell, the humans sent us a broken disk, it's been like 35 seconds and there's no music, just static noises"
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u/darybrain Jan 28 '23
The real important question here is what was on the golden record on Voyager 5 that made made V'ger so insistent to get to Earth to meet the creator? That music was so damn good that alien beings needed to find the source
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u/Chak-Ek Jan 28 '23
Baby got Back by Sir Mix-A-lot. That way the aliens would be aware of our preference for big butts and our likelihood to be truthful about it.
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u/ObeytheCorporations Jan 28 '23
Everything that is in the library of congress. And Johnny Cash, At Folsom Prison, album.
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u/Vegan_Harvest Jan 28 '23
A collection of human genomes from all major ethnic groups. Enough to restart the species.
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u/Xerozvz Jan 28 '23
Max it out with a looping copy of "This is the song that never ends" Might as well introduce them to psychological warfare
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u/Lukes-Panoptikum Jan 28 '23
I guess audio visual content of human violence against Nature, other species and its own species would be a honest representation of our self.
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u/Takssista Jan 28 '23
Definitely anything by Kanye West - aliens would surely go out of their way to come here and ask "Seriously, WTF?"
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u/TailsxCream4Eva Jan 28 '23
I cannot think of specific tracks but I can name some artists who's tracks should be on there.
-The Beatles
-The Rolling Stones
-Led Zeppelin
-Black Sabbath
-Pink Floyd
-Jean-Michel Jarre
-Kraftwerk
-Isao Tomita
-Vangelis
-Daft Punk
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u/ExpressStation Jan 28 '23
- Never Gonna Give You Up
- Bohemian Rhapsody
- Free Bird
- Hotel California
- Mr Sandman
- Enter Sandman (specifically in that order)
- It's The End of the World as We Know It
- We Didn't Start The Fire
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u/jomarthecat Jan 28 '23
Andrew Tate. Just put him physically on the record, send him to space and let him teach other civilations about being an Alpha Alien.
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u/Nevergonnagiveuup15 Jan 28 '23
Some tech stuff and something else to prove that we(or at least most of us)are not hostile
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u/Practical_Brother345 Jan 28 '23
Lol saw this on r/space were u the one that threatened to steal it??
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u/HospitableBadger Jan 28 '23
Let's see - BluRay of the movie Strange Brew - a random assortment of low-res reaction GIFs - DVDs of the entire ALF TV series - wiring schematics from a 1980 Dodge Challenger - an assembly solution to the CS Towers of Hanoi recursion problem - various gluten-free recipes - the first Smash Mouth album
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u/Ethanthestupididk Jan 28 '23
Propaganda saying that i am the one destined to be the great ruler solving all the problems of the universe, and that people have removed me from my throne and i need an army
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u/Average_Aloe Jan 28 '23
Probably the entire 70s to 90s discography of Fleetwood Mac and many documentaries about their career and band dynamics
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u/Turkeyoak Jan 29 '23
Beethoven’s 6th and 9th.
Who’s Next
All of the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Bob Dylan
Motown and the Blues sampler.
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u/JackJack65 Jan 29 '23
Wikipedia.
Anyway, if any spacefaring civilization recovers the golden record, it will surely be one of our descendents as an archeology project. No-one else knows the trajectory of the Voyager probes and finding a small object in the light years of empty space between the stars isn't possible unless you know where to look.
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u/RubSimple3294 Jan 29 '23 edited Jan 29 '23
Fnaf, fortbite free v-buck qr-code, undertale furry modded version.
A probe of all possible stds, and the whole rule34 database+ an extended gallery of porn from all ages The current locations of all tiktok users
A one hour dissertation about what instagram influencers are.
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u/gogojack Jan 27 '23
Well if Star Trek Beyond is to be believed, The Beastie Boys "Sabotage" should be on there to destroy any hostile aliens who might find it.