Gold vinyl for aliens may outlive humanity
Joel Snape’s article (Super-intelligent aliens are going to destroy humanity? Whatever, 23 August) raises the possibility of malevolent aliens.
The great Carl Sagan posited that if alien life did exist and came to visit Earth, they would almost certainly be friendly, because based on our own destructive course, which is more than likely to end in our extinction, it is likely that the aliens would have survived having discovered the art of coexistence.
The good fairies that were invited to our creation celebrations gave us artistic gifts from music and writing to painting and sculpture, but the fairy that might have endowed us with tolerance, understanding and the ability to live together was unceremoniously not invited.
We have recently learned of the longevity of Voyager 1, which back in 1990 took a photo of our planet from a distance of four billion miles that became known as the Pale Blue Dot, which Sagan described as “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam”. It continues to glide through space with its cargo of gold-plated vinyl LPs containing recordings of Beethoven, Bach and Chuck Berry, along with greetings in 55 languages. Since not many of us on planet Earth still possess a machine capable of playing vinyl LPs, it is likely, as Snape says, that “we are beneath the attention of aliens”.
Now that the Voyager craft are way beyond our solar system, it is likely they will outlast us, travelling through the universe as “silent ambassadors from what was once planet Earth” as the Sunday Times science editor Ben Spencer wrote recently. Perhaps Joel Snape is correct and that, as he concludes, “we should stop caring about any of it”. Antony BarlowWallington, London
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