Great Valentine’s appropriate story on NPR the other day via the always awesome Radio Lab, involving Carl Sagan,
a whirlwind marriage proposal by phone, a 2500 year old Chinese song, and brain waves of new love sent into space on a golden record for future alien civilizations to find.
This is a love story. And, oddly enough, it starts with an interstellar space mission and a golden record. Toward the end of the summer of ’77, NASA launched two spacecraft as part of the Voyager Interstellar Mission. On board each craft was a golden record that included, among other things, the sound of a kiss, a mother’s first words to her newborn child, music from all over the world, and greetings in 59 different languages…
Sagan’s wife Ann Druyan tells the story.