Voyager 1 is the most man-made object on Earth. After sweeping Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, it is now nearly 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth in interstellar space. Both Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, carry small pieces of humanity in the shape of their gold records. These messages in a bottle include spoken greetings in 55 languages, sounds and images of nature, an album of recordings and images of many cultures, and a written welcome message from Jimmy Carter, who was president of the United States when the spacecraft leaving Earth in 1977.
Each Voyager spacecraft carries a gold record containing two hours of sounds, music, and greetings from around the world. Carl Sagan and other scientists assumed that any civilization advanced enough to detect and capture the record in space could figure out how to reproduce it. NASA / Wikimedia Commons
Gold records were built to last a billion years around space, but in a recent analysis of the paths and dangers these explorers may face, astronomers estimated that they could exist for billions of years. years without remotely approaching any star.
Having spent my career in the field of religion and science, I have given much thought to how spiritual ideas intertwine with technological achievements. The incredible longevity of the Voyager spacecraft features a unique tangible entry point for exploring ideas of immortality.
For many people, immortality is the eternal existence of a soul or spirit that follows death. It can also mean the continuation of one’s legacy in memory and records. With its gold record, each Voyager offers this legacy, but only if it is discovered and appreciated by an alien civilization in the distant future.
Many religions adopt some form of life after death. RubberBall Productions / Brand X Pictures via Getty Images
Life after death
Religious beliefs about immortality are numerous and diverse. Most religions envisage a postmortem career for a personal soul or spirit, and these range from eternal residence among the stars to reincarnation.
The ideal eternal life for many Christians and Muslims is to remain forever in God’s presence in heaven or in paradise. The teachings of Judaism on what happens after death are less clear. In the Hebrew Bible, the dead are mere “shadows” in a dark place called Sheol. Some rabbinic authorities give credence to the resurrection of the righteous and even to the eternal state of souls.
Immortality is not limited to the individual. It can also be collective. For many Jews, the ultimate destiny of the nation of Israel or its people is of paramount importance. Many Christians anticipate a future general resurrection of all the dead and the coming of the Kingdom of God for the faithful.
Jimmy Carter, whose message and autograph are immortalized on Golden Records, is a progressive Southern Baptist and a living example of religious hope for immortality. Now battling brain cancer and approaching centenarian status, he has thought about dying. After his diagnosis, Carter concluded in a sermon: “I didn’t care if I died or lived. … My Christian faith includes total confidence in life after death. So I will live again after I die. “
It is plausible to conclude that the potential of an alien witnessing the gold disk and becoming aware of Carter’s identity billions of years in the future would only offer additional marginal consolation to him. Carter’s knowledge of his final destiny is a measure of his deep faith in the immortality of his soul. In this sense, it probably represents people of many religions.
Secular immortality
For secular or non-religious people, there is not much consolation in appealing to the continued existence of a soul or spirit after death. Carl Sagan, who had the idea for gold records and led its development, wrote about the afterlife: “I don’t know anything that suggests it’s more than an illusion.” He was saddened by the thought of losing important life experiences, such as watching his children grow up, rather than fearing the expected annihilation of his conscious self with the death of his brain.
For those like Sagan there are other possible options for immortality. They include freezing and preserving the body for a future physical resurrection or charging one’s consciousness and turning it into a digital form that would last much longer than the brain. None of these potential paths to physical immortality have been shown to be viable yet.
Gold records contain a snapshot of Earth and humanity.
The Voyagers and the legacy
Most people, whether secular or religious, want their actions to have a lasting meaning in the future as their fruitful legacy. People want to be remembered and appreciated, even loved. Sagan summed it up very well: “To live in the hearts we leave behind is to live forever.”
With Voyagers 1 and 2 estimated to exist for over a trillion years, they are as immortal as human artifacts. Even before the expected disappearance of the Sun, when it runs out of fuel in about 5 billion years, all living species, mountains, seas and forests will have been destroyed for a long time. It will be as if we and all the wonderful and extravagant beauty of planet Earth had ever existed, a devastating thought to me.
The trajectory of Voyager 1, in white, has taken the spacecraft beyond the orbits of outer planets into interstellar space, where aliens may one day find the relic of humanity. NASA / JPL via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
But in the distant future, the two Voyager spacecraft will still be floating in space, awaiting the discovery of an advanced alien civilization for which the messages of the gold records were destined. Only these records will probably remain as a witness and legacy of the Earth, a kind of objective immortality.
Religious and spiritual people can find solace in the belief that God or someone else awaits them after death. For the secular, in the hope that someone or something will remember humanity, any awake and grateful alien will have to do so.