On Thu, 11 Aug 2005 19:22:07 +0930, "Zilva Zanga" <whoopie@my.place.invalid>
wrote:

Were the 'golden' discs created because that was the best technology at the 
time or someother reason? i.e. if the same project was launched today, would 
they still use a copper record, or cd, or high capacity hdd, or what? 

    I'm not sure how much you know about these discs. They are intended as
messages to any alien civilization that might find the Voyager probes. As
such, they have to last a long time. That's the reason for the gold-plated
copper. They are much like old vinyl LP records, with the information cut
into a spiral groove. The idea is that this would be easy to decode.

    More detail is found here:

	http://cedmagic.com/featured/voyager/voyager-record.html
	The Voyager Spacecraft Interstellar Record