In 1977, Ann Druyan recorded an hour of her brainwaves and heartbeat two days after she and Carl Sagan agreed to marry, and NASA pressed the compressed minute onto Voyager’s Golden Record as a private love signal now more than 25 billion kilometres from Earth (opens in new tab)

On June 3, 1977, Ann Druyan sat for an hour-long recording session in New York while instruments captured the electrical activity of her brain and body. Two days earlier, she and Carl Sagan had decided over the telephone that they would marry. During the recording, she followed a mental script about Earth, life, civilization, war, […]