beoba

More or less educated guess, but cant be too far off:

Once that disc gets to the comet, it'll lose most of its data to the comet's emissions hitting the disc.

If I wanted something to not get torn up, I'd send it to the emptiest part of space availiable.

/me points at the voyager plates.

cfgauss

Nah, it's not like a CD. They specialy design it to be easily decoded and to last.

Godless Dave

Fortunately if any aliens find it they won't speak English.

Harpy

Godless Dave: "Fortunately if any aliens find it they won't speak English"

Elvis could translate it for them.

Shake

How about the Principia Mathematica instead?



Alien: Engraved disk? That's so 19th century! C'mon humans! Get with the times!

beoba

The voyager disk was a phonograph made of gold, FYI. I'm assuming thats what theyd be sending this message on, as, compared to a CD, there aren't any circuit boards to fry with cosmic rays or relative difficulty for setup and receiving a message compared to "put the disk on the tray and spin it this fast"

I know there are pictures of the voyager disc online, but I have no idea where those pictures would be. I'll edit if I find it in the next 15 mins.

Edit: Here's a url: http://vraptor.jpl.nasa.gov/voyager/record.html

The image at the top can be clicked for a larger version. The visible side has instructions for the setup of the record, as well as some data about the Sun's location.

I'd always assumed it was solid gold, instead of gold-plated copper.

More images:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/solar_system..._craft_300.jpg
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/solar_system...record_400.jpg

GunnerJ

OTOH, it might work out in our favor if the aliens happen to be talking snakes.

Edit: sorta crossposted but OH WELL.

Yggdrasill

I wouldn't be to concerned with the possible humiliation of humanty, the aliens might just interpret it as a work of fiction, and as far as fiction goes, the bible is a quite interesting. It has been translated, rephrased, edited, modified etc. again and again and is quite possibly the book with the most authors.

And the only purpose of the disk is to preserve the languages and ensure that if aliens first find the spacecraft, then come to Earth; they will be speaking a human language.

Besides, it will only be out there for "thousands of years", a short period when compared to the universe, chances are they will never find it. (If they do indeed exist.) Even if they find it, they have to interpret it. They might interpret it as a declaration of war or a complete inventory of all teddybears in germany. If they try to read it as a spiral pattern from the center they might discern the words "Zplorag exists" several times and take it as evidence for the existence of Zplorag. And maybe... (ad infinitum)

The chances of aliens finding the disk and then reading it in the correct way is infinitesimal. So, don't worry, aliens aren't going to laugh at you.

I_C_THE_LITE

Well, lets just hope the disc is found by 'friendly' aliens. They will find it humorous. On the other hand, if it is retrieved by aggressives we would be in serious trouble. They would not see the message as not only illogical and incoherent, but the work of a warped people with no clue. What better planet to overrun.

Buddrow_Wilson

I dunno...It always struck me as utter crap on a literary scale.