OPINION: Marveling at technology's progress

Columnist Andrew Gale talks tech

LEAP FORWARD: NASA crews working on the Voyager space probe. Picture: Contributed

IT'S A big anniversary in space exploration over the next couple of weeks.

Forty years since the two Voyager Spacecraft were launched on their quests into space.

Over the years they have made some amazing discoveries about our solar system and as we speak, they continue to do so.

The spacecraft are now heading out into interstellar space. You can follow them on the NASA website but roughly speaking they are still hurtling outwards from our solar system, at a speed of at least 60,000 km/hr and are now about 20 Billion Km's from earth and travelling.

I just watched an interesting television show about them and the gold-plated phonographic records, named "The Sounds of Earth" that were sealed inside the spacecraft when they were launched.

The idea being that if intelligent life ever came across Voyager, which I sincerely hope happens, they could plonk it on the old Hi-Fi and listen to our messages.

Some of the things on the record include greetings in 55 different languages, sounds of our earth and wildlife and a bunch of musical tracks as iconic and diverse as Chuck Berry, Mozart, Beethoven, traditional Navaho and digeridoo music.

These recordings were recently released by NASA along with a commemorative book containing many images of earth that were also sent with the Voyagers.

You can buy the recordings as digital downloads, Compact Disks, and for the hard-core LP enthusiast in vinyl and even commemorative vinyl picture disks.

I can't help but think though, what if the aliens out there, the ones who go to the trouble of catching this fast-moving ship don't have a turntable to play the record on?

I know there are plenty of vinyl enthusiasts out there and the last thing I want to do is draw their wrath but to most people out there, the record player went the same way as the rotary dial telephone. Gone, never to be seen again.

I mean, if an alien lobbed at your doorstep tomorrow, clutching a 40cm round gold-plated LP and asked you to (besides "take me to your leader" or "prepare to be probed") "play this record for me earthling. Could you?

Since 1977 we have had countless new ways to play music and similar media, each, on their release, being enthusiastically and whole-hardly declared as being the next best thing since, well, um, the gramophone record.

Digital downloads, 8-track, cassettes, CD, laser disk, DVD, blue-ray, VHS, BETA and on and on. I could find 52 different formats alone with a quick web search.

In our household, we mostly use digital media but can still play DVD, Vinyl, VHS and even cassettes in my old 1980 XD Falcon.

For longevity, besides digital media, nothing beats VHS, especially around kids. It's a tape enclosed within a hard box for goodness sake.

They can take everything other than being run over by a truck.

They will live forever in our house.