Stefan Helmreich

en

Stefan Helmreich is Professor of Anthropology at MIT. He is the author of Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas (University of California Press, 2009), a study of marine biologists working in realms usually out of sight and reach: the microscopic world, the deep sea, and oceans outside national sovereignty. His essays have appeared in Critical Inquiry, Representations, American Anthropologist, and The Wire.

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research expositions

  • Remixing the Voyager Interstellar Record: Or, As Extraterrestrials Might Listen (2014) author(s): Stefan Helmreich published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
    This text offers an introduction to a hyperlink, http://earthscramble.com/, a portal to the Scrambles of Earth project, which is dedicated to decoding and disseminating audio transmissions of possible extraterrestrial origin that have been received on Earth in response to the Voyager Golden Record. The Voyager Record, a compendium of recorded Earth sounds affixed in phonograph form to NASA’s Voyager spacecraft, was launched out of Earth orbit in the 1970s and in 2013 left our solar system to travel into interstellar space. It may be that aliens have started listening in — and more, as the Scrambles of Earth document suggests, it may be that aliens have started to create their own interpretations of the Earth sounds they have received. Whether such Voyager Record echoes are messages meant for Earthly receipt or are simply exploratory experiments in sound that happen to have been intercepted on their way to somewhere else remains to be determined.
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