THE KISS THAT WOULD LAST A BILLION YEARS
探索宇宙: 鍍金銅盤
In 1977 two unmanned spacecraft were launched to explore the universe. Today Voyager 1 and 2 have reached the far side of our solar system, fourteen billion kilometres from Earth.

In the hope that they would encounter intelligent, extra-terrestrial life forms, each craft was equipped with "The Message of Mankind", a gold-plated record containing a 'complete' description of mankind and of our planet Earth - a selection of sound bites, compositions, pictograms and photographic images that would explain the essence of humanity.

It is the work of a team of specialists led by the visionary scientist Carl Sagan who died in 1996. The record contains a collection of sounds and images of people in all kinds of social situations and activities. Although human anatomy is one of the major subjects, the record contains neither nudity nor does it show a man and a woman together. NASA censored both on the insistence of conservative Americans. Also, there are no references to war, violence or death.

In this programme, the project's participants are interviewed, among them music journalist Tim Ferris who was asked to choose the twenty-seven most important pieces of music of all time. This provides the film with a glorious soundtrack featuring Bach, Chuck Berry's 'Johnny B. Goode' and many more. And the record contains Carl Sagan's son, saying; "Hello from the children of planet Earth", and of course... Kiss.

The chances of one of the spacecraft reaching an inhabited planet are next to none, but even if this did happen, planet Earth by then would have ceased to exist. And so the Voyager's gold-plated record is not only a message to extraterrestrial life but also the last vestige of us a mirror of mankind.

二十六年前發射的旅行者一號與二號太空船，如今已離開太陽有一百億公里之遠。旅行者太空船是由深空通訊網追蹤與指揮，飛越外行星脫離太陽系的人造飛行器。在每艘旅行者太空船上都附有一片十二吋的鍍金銅盤。這個猶如裝在被拋入宇宙之海的瓶子中的信息，紀錄地球上的文明與生物的影像和聲音，這些聲音與影像是由委員會主席卡爾薩根博士挑選出來的。原版英文發音。

54 mins.
English version