The most common soundtrack is that of our lives, indeed. For NASA and their Voyager program however, the common sounds of Earth have been transcribed onto a golden record for extraterrestrial life to listen to--so long as the aliens can figure out how to play the record. Now, those sounds are available to stream on the NASA SoundCloud.
On the record are recordings of a tractor, train, horse, Morse code, ships, sheep, mud pots, wind and much more. The 12-inch phonograph disc is supposed to serve as a salutation to alien life so long as they come into contact with either the Voyager 1 or Voyager 2 spacecraft.
Launched in 1977, it is "mankind's most distant emissary" carrying with it a time capsule launched into the vast unknown. As Carl Sagan put it, "like a bottle in the cosmic ocean."
The sounds and images that are captured on the phonograph are most obviously interpretations of Earth and its inhabitants. Since they are used to represent mankind in a special way, the discs have been labeled Greetings to the Universe and Sounds of Earth.
Even on the newly uploaded Greetings playlist, there are tracks of 55 welcome messages spoken in a diverse series of languages from Akkadian to Wu.
The tracks were chosen by a committee that was headed by famed Sagan and is, as NASA states, "intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials."
So with that in mind we present you the SoundCloud playlist below. If you're alone in a house in the woods with the lights off, this could prove to be more eerie than you're prepared to deal with. That is, unless you like the sound of children's disembodied voices speaking in strange languages.
Otherwise, check out the sounds of our planet below and keep yourself prepared for when we make first contact.
