The Voyager Golden Record is a phonograph record included in the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977. It contains sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. It is intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or far future humans, that may find it. The Voyager spacecraft would take about 40,000 years to reach the distance of the star nearest the Sun, Alpha Centauri at a distance of 4.4 light-years, though neither craft is travelling toward that star.
As the probes are extremely small compared to the vastness of interstellar space, it is extraordinarily unlikely that they will ever be accidentally encountered. If they are ever found by an alien species, it will most likely be far in the future, and thus the record is best seen as a time capsule or a symbolic statement rather than a serious attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life.
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Is anybody listening out there?
Messages have been sent to a planet 20 light years from Earth in the hope they will reach intelligent alien life.
Some 501 photos, drawings and text messages were transmitted on Thursday by a giant radio-telescope in Ukraine normally used to track asteroids.
The target planet was chosen as it is thought capable of supporting life.
Any reply to the messages - collated through a competition by the social networking website Bebo - would not reach Earth for 40 years.
The competition - A Message From Earth - invited Bebo's 12m users to send in missives they would like extra-terrestrials to receive.
Topics submitted ranged from the environment, politics and world peace to family relationships and the sender's first kiss.
Having been translated into a binary format, the 500 selected will travel 120 trillion miles into space after being sent via high-powered radio waves from the National Space Agency of Ukraine's RT-70 radar telescope in Evpatoria.
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