spacelesbians:

spacelesbians:

my favourite thing that I learned about the voyager spacecraft today is that two days before Ann Druyan had her brain waves and heartbeat recorded to send into the universe Carl Sagan and her had confessed their love for each other and gotten engaged and so all of those feelings of being in love are out there recorded on voyager right now 

“On June 1, 1977, Carl and I shared a wonderfully important phone call,” she recalls. Without the aid of a date or even a romantic moment alone, the two had fallen in love during the mad rush to complete the Golden Record. “We decided to get married. It was a Eureka! moment for both of us—the idea that we could find the perfect match. It was a discovery that has been reaffirmed in countless ways since.”

Echoes of that moment reverberated through her mind during the recording session. Her conscious mind may have been reciting culture and philosophy, but her subconscious was buzzing with the euphoria of the Great Idea of True Love. The hour was electronically compressed to a single minute that sounds, appropriately, like a string of exploding firecrackers.

“My feelings as a 27 year old woman, madly fallen in love, they’re on that record,” says Druyan. “It’s forever. It’ll be true 100 million years from now. For me Voyager is a kind of joy so powerful, it robs you of your fear of death.” (link)