Forty Thousand...

Forty thousand: an interesting number. On the one hand the words make up 66% of the title of "Forty Thousand Headmen" a song by the band Traffic, released in 1968, and which featured on one of those musical staples of the era - the sampler album [vinyl record] - "Nice Enough To Eat", released on Chris Blackwell's Island Records in 1969 at the pocket-friendly price of 15/6d [old money - look it up] here in the UK, and which is still one of my favourite listens to this day.

On the other hand, forty thousand years ago or thereabouts, Homo Sapiens was finally left to its own devices as the apex of mammalian development thus far, as most of the other early human species had died out, save a possible few Neanderthal stragglers, who lasted a few thousand years longer. Anyhow, I say this to put into perspective the fate of two other rather more famous record albums, physically essentially similar in nature to Nice Enough To Eat, that are currently deep in interstellar space, aboard the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977. Included on the discs is Carl Sagan's young son's message to the Universe. A poignant touch: I've mentioned before the famous "Blue Dot" image of the Earth, taken by Voyager I at Sagan's behest [blog post passim] as it finally left our cosmic neighbourhood for good, en route ultimately for God alone knows where.

The 'Golden Records' on board each ship are our calling card as a species to whatever sentient life-forms that might encounter them in the distant future: Voyager I will pass within approximately 1.6 light-years of the star Gliese 445 in the constellation of Camelopardelis in about 40,000 years time: curious, innit? One might imagine though that the crude analogue techniques that produced the 'golden records' would be inherently inferior to 21st Century technology in doing the same job. But think on: decoding a pure analogue representation of anything is inherently easier than unravelling the digital spaghetti we laughingly call data, in its myriad forms and standards, most of which are now obsolete and not even useable by us now, let alone 40,000 year hence by a completely different species. Methinks a gold-plated old-school vinyl record equates far better to the Rosetta Stone than a fragile and ultimately evanescent Spotify stream ever could...