The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes, launched in 1977, contain the Voyager Golden Record, a 12-inch phonograph disc. It acts as a cosmic time capsule containing greetings in 55 languages, natural and mechanical sounds of Earth, 90 minutes of music from around the world, and encoded analogue images. Carl Sagan, leader of the Voyager Golden Record project, noted: The launching of this ‘bottle’ into the cosmic ‘ocean’ says something very hopeful about life on this planet.

Since the launch of the Voyager probes, Earth has become a rather gloomy place, beleaguered by wars, genocides, autocrats and environmental destruction.

For this reason, we decided to launch a 12-inch phonograph disc to Earth. Apparently, it is not the aliens who need to discover a hopeful message about this planet — it is us.