The Story Behind the Stitch" (Deep Dives)
Have you ever looked up at the night sky and wondered, “If someone out there is looking back, what do they know about us?”
In 1977, NASA decided to answer that exact question. Before launching the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft into deep space, a team led by legendary astronomer Carl Sagan was given a monumental task: create a message from humanity to the cosmos.
The result? The Golden Record. A 12-inch, gold-plated copper phonograph record attached to both spacecraft.
It is the ultimate cosmic message in a bottle. Today, Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles away from Earth—making it the farthest human-made object in history. It has officially left our solar system and entered interstellar space. And on its side, it carries our story.
But how do you explain the entire human race to an extraterrestrial civilization that doesn’t speak a word of English?
Here is the secret breakdown of the symbols etched onto the record—and onto our Cosmos Tee.
What Did We Put Inside?
If the aliens manage to build a record player based on those instructions, they will hear and see a snapshot of Earth from 1977.
The Sounds of Earth: The record contains the sound of rain, a mother kissing her child, a roaring volcano, a heartbeat, and the sound of a train.
The Music: The playlist spans centuries and continents. It includes Bach, Beethoven, Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode, traditional Azerbaijani folk music, and Peruvian wedding songs.
The Greetings: Hello spoken in 55 different languages. (It also includes a printed message from the President of the United States and the Secretary-General of the UN).
The Photos: 116 images encoded into analog signals, showing human anatomy, architecture, supermarkets, and people eating dinner.
A Piece of Hidden Lore: The Secret Cosmic Love Letter
While recording the sounds for the track, Creative Director Ann Druyan (who later married Carl Sagan) had her brainwaves and heartbeats recorded while she thought about the history of ideas, the hardships of Earth, and what it felt like to fall in love. Those electrical impulses were compressed into sound and etched onto the record. If aliens ever decode it, they will literally have access to the data of human love traveling through the stars.
Wear the Message
Our Cosmos Tee features the exact, mathematically accurate diagram etched onto the Voyager cover.
The next time someone stops you and asks, “What do those lines on your shirt mean?” you don’t just say it’s a cool design. You get to tell them that they are looking at humanity’s official return address to the universe.
