Original subtitles

can this golden plate

solve one of humanity's greatest mysteries are

we alone in the universe what

secrets does this strange 600

year old book that no one can read

voanagement the script is like a

giant puzzle it could be the key to

unknown mysteries and is

this stone mirror one Connection

to the beyond this strange thing is

full of secrets no one knew how it

works or where it came from

fascinating mysterious objects

[music]

long hidden in museums laboratories and

archives

we can use the most modern technology to

reveal their secrets

we can recreate them

disassemble

and enlarge

and thus forget the

hidden and bizarre reveal

these are the strangest things in the world

[music]

in the depths of the universe floats

this man-made object

a striking golden plate it is

located beyond the boundaries of

our solar system more than 20

billion kilometers from Earth

to reveal its secrets

we bring this record back

to earth only virtually

[music]

the so-called Voyager golden record it

has a diameter of only 30 cm

apparently

incomprehensible scientific

hieroglyphs are engraved in its cover

[music]

and the content is even more bizarre

it is a gold-plated metal disc with

very fine grooves that contain information.

It looks like an ordinary

country playing record. On it are pictures,

sounds and songs from our

planet Earth as well as a large message

in 55 languages. It

is a time capsule that

gives an insight into the human world

but the message is not for

humanity Certainly

the purpose of this record was to show

what Earth is all about and to convey that

information to aliens,

but how do you create something that will be

understood by an alien species

whose existence is not even

certain? What exactly is on this

record and is it just a PR? Do

researchers really believe in

aliens?

The idea that extraterrestrials

exist became more and more established in the 20th century.

In August 1924,

researchers began listening for alien life forms in space.

Every hour there was radio silence

across the country for five minutes in the United States

so that researchers could detect any

signals He was

unusually close to the earth at that time, so

if there were noises that suggested

extraterrestrial life there,

that would be a chance to hear them

launched

the search for extraterrestrial

intelligence

and for the first time it seems really

promising when the age of

space travel suddenly became

tangible we could all explore

and perhaps interact with aliens

that changed our

imagination people wondered are

we alone in the universe

until In 1972, 12 people set foot on the moon,

seven space probes fly successfully to

Venus and four to Mars,

but NASA wants to continue the research a

lot more.

Sound scientists

realized that a remarkable

event was about to happen in the

1970s, an opportunity presented itself that is

only Every 175 years all the outer

planets were stationary so that a

space probe could be sent out to

reach them all at once.

This chance only exists for a short time

and it will only be available again in 175 years,

so it is important to act quickly or

wait a long time. In

1977,

NASA launches two State-of-the-art

space probes

[Music]

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 their mission in

space

they are supposed to head to all the outer planets for the first time

Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune

but it is a journey without

returning to the outer planets

has to be traveling absurdly fast at

around 16 kilometers per second Because of their

speed, they can't stop.

They fly past the planets, take

quick pictures and rush on without

stopping.

At the end of their mission,

they simply disappear somewhere in the

interstellar

space. NASA researchers want to send the probes into the universe with a message

and it's on the Voyager golden

record

the approach was that in the distant future,

perhaps thousands or millions of

years from now, an extraterrestrial civilization

would come across this strange object in the depths of the ancient world. They would then

hopefully decode the information on it

and thus learn something about the

alien species that sent this

message into space sent

so a kind of message in a bottle for

all traveling aliens

for me the plate holds the dream or

the hope that something out there will

one day find it and realize that we

are here want to get in touch

but if NASA is serious about it

contact with one advanced

alien species why

on earth is it something as

old-fashioned as a record

this decision is made by a man

chosen by the nose to implement the interstellar

message

was one of the most famous and

popular researchers of the 20th century

an astronomer's heart but also one of the

first astrobiologists

he was specifically interested in what

aliens might look like.

The data carrier that selects the blessing for the

message into space has to be

able to last for thousands of years and things are

pretty brutal in space.

Beyond the Earth's atmosphere the

conditions are extremely harsh,

the radiation from the sun is violent and the

temperature fluctuations are extremely

it is a dangerous environment it is

then so difficult to find an object

that can store information there

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the magnetic tapes of the computers of the

70s exclude blessings the tape would

dissolve in space instead

he uses vinyl

information on one in the old school way

Sending out a record seems absurd, even in

the 70s the technology was

outdated, but it was a good approach

[music]

the information is stored in these fine

grooves that run through the

material, they can withstand some

bombardment by high-energy

particles,

a species that Spaceships are built to be able to

play a record.

To be on the safe side, they put

a needle in the protective cover,

but vinyl is not space safe. They

have to refine the material.

The record is made of metal made of

engraved copper so that it lasts a long time.

It was also covered with gold

gold is a very reactive

metal, it does not rust or decompose

so quickly.

Next up is a blessing full of questions:

what message will be put on the

intergalactic record? How can

all of humanity and the world around

us be summarized on a single

long-playing record?

This is an enormous challenge

you have to somehow capture on a record the

essence of human civilization in

all its many forms

only eight months to carry out the entire project

he puts together a team of

researchers musicologists and

artists

including

later woman

the record begins with a

big message from the earth

we start

from At the beginning the

UN Secretary General speaks followed by greetings in

55 different languages,

strangely enough, there are

several of them and ancient Greek, which

no one has spoken for a long time.

After the big messages,

the alien listener can relax with 90

minutes of a wide variety of sounds,

the biggest hits of the entire

planet including Mozart's Magic Flute

a Georgian folk song Johann

Sebastian Bach of course songs of the

Wacho the Brandenburg concerts

Indonesian

song about cranes

[music]

he put together a collection of world music

before the term

was even in use and

earthly sounds are also

represented wind

Donna an erupting volcano here

loud

a morse code a train a tractor a

rocket and a kiss

saws wants to offer potential new

alien friends a real

multimedia experience so he

also adds pictures

by an extremely lucky coincidence

the technology was just ready to

store pictures on records

but the There is only enough space for 115 pictures.

Surprisingly, blessing

first chooses something very simple, a

circle. The

idea behind it is that circles

are universal shapes that

exist everywhere in the universe. Any

alien civilization that is

intelligent enough to decipher the message

will quickly realize

that it is It is a circle.

Aliens can use the circle to

see whether the pictures

are displayed correctly. There is

still room for 114 more.

When we look at a photo, we know

much more precisely what we are looking at than

an alien might do.

He sees a couple holding hands

as two independent

organisms or as a single

giant creature

the selected motifs form a

wide spectrum from biology animals

plants our planet our

behavior our civilizations and

our achievements all in just 115

images

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the record is completed by a

one-hour recording of human

brain waves for In case it

can read our minds

the Voyager golden record is a

pretty good solution to a rather

absurd task

namely to summarize the entire works and

history of humanity on a

planet in a solar system on a

long-playing record -

the content is even the easier part

is more difficult the instructions should

be engraved in the case but how do

you formulate the instructions for use so

that aliens understand them?

The researchers assume that whoever

finds the plate is traveling in space

but

can still contradict human language and completely

different units of measurement for time and

Distance has

what unit of measurement could it be

considered literally universal?

Frank Drake provides the ingenious answer. If

you delete it into the universe with the right

receiving device at the right frequency,

you hear a

signal that penetrates it. This signal is generated by the

most common element in the universe,

hydrogen

is to set the so-called

h1 line or hydrogen line

was brilliant all

intelligent living beings in space are allowed to

know

the wavelength is around 21 cm

and the vibrations are

distributed throughout the universe

[music]

and these properties are the same everywhere

the vibration frequency provides a

universal unit of time Wavelength

of the vibration a universal

unit of length

to convey the alien blessing

engraved on the shell a small

drawing two hydrogen atoms that

stand for the hydrogen line

an alien finds the plate he can use

the h1 line to understand how

tall people are or how big the

solar system is and So he can also

understand our time, how long does

a human pregnancy last, how

quickly does this record have to

be played? Next comes the

question of numbers, how does an alien count?

We usually work in

increments of ten with numbers from 0 to 9,

i.e. 10 numbers and so on you can

represent large numbers to save space but it

is completely arbitrary

blessing does not rely on the

decimal system but a system

every intelligent being should know

the numerical information on the

disk is encoded in binary so only

with ones and zeros because that is

probably the most basic numerical system

explore explore they understand hopefully also

the mathematics we use

if you look closely you can see a

picture of the record on the cover and

around it in binary code the

speed at which it

should be played with 16 two-thirds

revolutions per minute a representation of

Earth's stars along with their distance

as well in binary code shows the

position of the earth

finally there is a special

very human message on the

record under high magnification you can see

a faint inscription left

by those who made the record the

makers of music in all worlds at

all times

and that is it Snapshot of

human life on Earth including

reading instructions for extraterrestrials,

all of this on an LP.

These interstellar

messages

have changed our understanding of the planets out there.

On their way

through space, the suns send pictures

of Jupiter, for example, from Earth

we can see this We can just barely see the red dot

but now we see a

dynamic weather system around this

incredibly huge planetary vortex.

We have seen close-ups of Saturn

penetrate

Start still data on Earth

even though they have left the solar system

it will be 40,000 years

before one of them comes close to another star

this plate is a beautiful

hopeful message from a

lush wonderful planet there are

many different cultures languages ​​and

emotions in this plate with

The question is whether it will ever be discovered

and understood.

Locked up in a cupboard at

Diehl University there is a strange

medieval book that has

puzzled historians for 100 years. There

is only one copy.

Nobody knows who wrote it and

nobody knows what it is about. It is

a big one Mystery

manuscript

it is around 22 x 16 cm in size its pages

are made of calf parchment

on the 240 pages there are also

illustrations made of ink the text on

these pages is completely incomprehensible

it looks like a language but

it is true that

we cannot make sense of the

letters why should someone

create a book so detailed that

no one can understand the text itself

is completely incomprehensible but

the drawings don't help either

the book is full of symbols and

bizarre illustrations

women bathing naked plants and soil

more recent studies may now have

hidden clues

discovered within the drawings they

could partially solve the puzzle

but the voyage man remains full of

secrets

where does it come from how old is it and what

can it tell us

it could be a key to unknown

mysteries

a quick look at this unusual

writing leaves one guess

If you take everything together now, the

strange alphabet, the drawings, that

you don't know exactly where the

book comes from, then of course

sooner or later you have to at least consider that it

's a relatively modern book, but

still a joke, a fake

or a scam

The rumor could have been going on for decades

that it wasn't a manuscript, it was a

forgery

made for the lucrative

antiquarian market.

In this case, the main suspect would be

the man who was discovered in 1912. Wilfried

Weinitz

was looking for rare books

and lost books and

scripts he had on In any case, he

had the necessary prerequisites to

make such a counterfeit,

but he may have been the

victim of a fraud himself when he thought that mannos

simply produced something for him or

not for him and he then

simply bought it and fell into the trap himself

with the help of science

let the truth come to light

2009 In 2009, researchers at the

University of Arizona determined through

radiocarbon dating that the

manuscript was from the period 1404 to

1438. So the Kalbs parchment is

really old

but that doesn't mean that it was

written in the Middle Ages old Kalbs

Re-writing parchment or pages from ancient manuscripts is a

common forger's trick. To

check this, researchers have examined the ink for

synthetic modern chemicals. The

ink used is very similar

to that used for other

medieval manuscripts.

It is made of hematite or iron,

i.e. simple Substances instead of

complex hydrocarbons that are often found in

modern ink,

this combination of different age

materials convinces the experts if

you look at the parchment and the

age of the parchment and also the

composition of the ink then you know

that it is really old that is from

the first Half of the 15th century

it should be a forgery

then not a modern one, the manuscript is

genuine and if so what does it say

[music]

Kurt [ __ ] and linguists have been

trying to decipher the extraordinary text for decades

if you look at the alphabet that it

is has been studied for 100 years now,

you can recognize possible vowels in it,

you can maybe recognize a few numbers in it,

but that's it.

Overall, the whole thing doesn't make any sense

that you can correctly assign to an alphabet or a

language and even

the experts are still at a loss to this day

that it may not be

a normal font at all but a

code, it

may have been written in so-called mono-

alphabetic substitution, in which

the code simply

replaces one letter with another

and so on. This makes the font

very complicated at first glance,

but this Kot is

relatively easy for mathematicians to recognize.

You check which letters

appear most frequently in the text. In

English the most common letter is anyway,

so the tent appears here most

often. You can assume that the

tent is the same, but

you gradually get through the rarer

letters and get Slowly a

picture

Experts have examined the enigmatic script

with this approach.

Manuscript, this method does not help,

even when compared with other languages,

this technique simply seems to lead to nowhere.

Numerous more complicated

encryptions have also been tested by the best

ciphers in the world,

including Alan Turing, who was during the During the

Second World War, he was involved in the

decryption of the enigma code

but the now manuscript has

not yet been deciphered.

According to some researchers, it lacks the

signs of a really complex short

it should seem completely random, like

a virus, a jumble of letters,

numbers and symbols, but that's

probably not how it looks Manuscript not out if it is

not a code then

perhaps it could be an unknown

language

to check. Researchers examine

the letter patterns

Languages ​​are absolutely not arbitrary

they follow all kinds of patterns that

have developed organically one

of them is the different frequency

of the letters or different words

that appear frequently

as a xylophone, for example, and then there are

grammatical patterns, the structure of

sentences and punctuation marks

[music] In

2013, mathematicians and

computer scientists at the

University of Sao Paulo in Brazil are checking

whether known patterns appear in the voyage manuscript.

Researchers have Comparisons were made and,

for example, the length of words and the

number of letters in English and

Portuguese were compared with the voyage

manuscript. They wanted to see

whether the words were arranged sensibly

and yes, they are, by and large,

friends

but it fits,

the strange thing is we understand the

symbols I don't want to even

though they obviously have a pattern,

it's not a wild mess, it

looks a lot like a language that does

n't want. Writing seems to have the

pattern of a real language,

but that doesn't make things any easier for the

experts.

We can recognize words either because

We've seen them before or because

we've heard them before but

since we don't know the letters

we're pretty much lost because again

we know the words and we don't know

what they sounded like.

For decades, poop crackers and

linguists have been trying to decipher the writing

without success

the drawings allow you to reveal the

secrets of the voyage manuscript

[music]

the pictures accompanying the text are among the

strangest things I have ever seen

the manuscript is teeming with

colorful, enigmatic

illustrations plan at Hogwarts there is,

for example, herbology with lots of

pretty pictures of plants Then there are

depictions of naked

women bathing and also detailed pictures

of a castle.

Recent research may have finally found an

answer to the mystery of the voyage

manuscript. In

2013, two US scientists became

aware of the unusual drawings.

Some of the plants are familiar in

American botanists They

looked closely at the pictures in the manuscript and

discovered similarities to

native plants from Central America.

According to the experts, almost 60 of the plants drawn here could

come from Mexico

[Music]

Agave

Yam

Catchfly

Thistle

Violet and many more

at first glance a convincing

approach to

the manuscript Connecting Central American

research is

an interesting idea creative and

innovative

the botanists also note

similarities between the voyage

manuscript and a well-known ancient

text on medieval

herbalism the codex -

this new approach finally provides the

key to the secrets of the

weinage man lie his origins in

Central America it is a

Mexican herbal book, indigenous

peoples undoubtedly have a heading and

excellent knowledge of nature, but

this theory has a few catches

[music]

on the one hand, the chronological order does

not match the calf parchment of the voyage

manuscript is dated to 1438 at the latest,

i.e. over 50 Years before the Europeans

discovered the American continent

[music]

the codex course at Dianos with which the

manuscript is compared was even

written 100 years later,

the valuable calf parchment could have

remained unused for 100 years after its production -

this is possible but

unlikely

and Even if you leave aside the temporal

questions, some drawings

point to a completely different

country of origin.

There is a detailed drawing

of a castle that has features of

Berlin architecture,

especially the battlements on the towers,

so it is a book about

Mexico or an unknown text About

Europe or something completely different,

no one knows for sure but there is

one last trace:

there is a letter in which the book is mentioned.

The book probably didn't

find a letter itself that dates from 1665.

An antique dealer and

possible alchemist from Prague is mentioned there so

that the whole thing now

has a small starting point here -

only a few people know this alchemist - a

white that is only visible in UV light

leads to Prague -

another fascinating detail is

that on the first page of the manuscript

the signature of a man

was found, the herbalist at Hofer Rudolf

the Second was

Rudolf the second Emperor of the Holy

Roman Empire and was a

colorful figure in Europe at the time. It's

easy to imagine that Rudolf II

wanted the manuscript, he had the

money, he was interested and he did

n't necessarily have to understand it,

he just needed enough People who

told him that it was fascinating and

important

could Prague and Rudolf the Second

reveal where the manuscript was from and

wanted to sell an untranslatable text with mysterious images

from different continents and

cultures at the highest price. It's

exactly right

that the true story behind

this enigmatic book still exists

other explanations why the manuscript

is unreadable

I myself have seen texts for a long time

with lots of

beautifully done drawings that are in

this person's world, for example because she

had psychosis, because she had a lot of

imagination, because she had a lot of fun, it

just makes total sense

People with psychosis can

create their own reality and it does

n't have to have anything to do with the outside world. There

can also be logical, sensible,

closed language and

drawing systems that only

work as long as that

person is alive. The manuscript could therefore

have arisen from a psychosis be or

is it just an ancient hoax

I don't think manuscript

was written to be understood I should amaze

much more deceive

fascinate and maybe bring in a sack

of gold from Rudolf the second

maybe the real secret of

wanting is always an unsolvable

puzzle will remain I somehow like

that it remains a mystery

because we cannot understand

what is written in it

[Music]

London 1966 the British Museum acquires

a mysterious artifact it looks

like a simple black plate but

it is much more than that a

spiritual cult object whose origin has been a

mystery for centuries.

This strange thing is full of

secrets. Nobody knew how it

works or where it came from.

With the help of modern technology,

researchers want to reveal the secrets of the dark

stone slab.

It has a diameter of around 18 cm and

is about one and a half centimeters thick

made from a coherent piece of obsidian a rock that is

formed in the heart of a volcano

[music]

natural rock glass with this

black shine

in this case this natural

property is extremely pronounced

the stone has been heavily worked and

polished to shine like a mirror

but the stone is no mirror for the

world on this side,

its purpose is no longer in the macabron

[applause]

new research now reveals the

astonishing origin of the

obsidian mirror,

where does it come from, who

worked on it and what was it used for? Acquired

my

object, there was a small note

with it that said that a doctor was on it

the one with this stone

[music]

there is only one

famous doctor in history the

a mysterious figure from

Tudor Britain 500 years ago

[music]

that's difficult to answer

he moved between what we know

today as science and what We

call it magic,

this reputation as a wise man makes him rise to be an

astrologer and personal advisor to

Queen Elizabeth the First

the nation he had influence

but the shiny stone has nothing to

do with his cultivated life at court

the alchemist who firmly believes he can

contact the dead through the mirror

mainly wanted to turn lead into gold in

fact they were much more

into the so-called stone the

philosopher found

a stone that could prolong life and

explain the meaning of life.

In the search for this philosopher's stone he became

convinced that

angels could help him. The

obsidian mirror plays a central

role in this passion for the

supernatural, according to one He

uses the note attached to his case to

summon spirits.

It is known that he tried to communicate with spirits.

He wanted to

find out more so that he could then speak to beings from the

afterlife. Yes, the obsidian mirror

is used to communicate with these angels as a gateway to the afterlife

He has something that he calls a fortune-telling

mirror, apparently to communicate with spirits.

That sounds crazier than

it is because a connection between

mirrors and spirits has been drawn in

spiritual circles for

centuries.

Looking into a glass ball or a mirror to see something is one

ancient method that has been around for a long time,

more than 1500 years before John Dee,

the Celts in the British

Isles use bronze mirrors and reflecting

water surfaces to make contact with their

gods and the deceased.

The ancient mystical connection

between spirits and mirrors could explain

why this strange obsidian plate

Judas appears in England unfortunately there is a

catch in this theory

and in the United Kingdom there is

no obsidian there is very small

old volcanic rock with some

pieces of glass but not that way you could get such a

beautiful object like this mirror

finished one so it must

be somewhere else

but where

and who The person who made it

[music]

definitely put a lot of

effort into it

[music]

I'm not sure it was made from his only

piece

could make a wonderful mirror

but in order to give obsidian such a

mirror-like shine

someone must have sanded and polished the surface for weeks

[music]

very special for

centuries the origin of the

mirror remains unclear until the

University of Manchester

examined its chemical fingerprint in 2019, using

state-of-the-art technology

Use the so-called

X-ray fluorescence analysis we are

stomachs are different

different countries have different

chemical fingerprints so

if you analyze what the

mirror is made of and which volcano

or area the fingerprint

matches Bingo then you have the

place of origin

the results are amazing

the composition of the obsidian led

to Mexico into the Mexican forests

where

a 2 million year old

volcanic mirror had been mined for over 3000 years,

but that doesn't reveal when it

was made.

You can find out the rock of the animals

that the mirror is made of, but the exact

time of manufacture It's

impossible to determine, maybe he was

hundreds of years old when his doctor

came into possession of this, they don't know it,

the chemistry doesn't help, but

maybe the archeology

before me than 700 years ago when

obsidian was mined in these quarries,

the Aztecs lived here,

the mirror adds fits into their history

like a puzzle piece. It is known

that the Aztecs knew obsidian mirrors.

In fact, one of their gods is called

test. Figures are depicted with an

obsidian mirror in their hand.

Some Aztec rulers owned

such a mirror called test -

a remarkable coincidence when you

consider that John was the one uses his mirror in

exactly the same way

[music]

the mirror probably came to us via

the Spanish conquistadors who,

after they defeated the Aztecs in 1519

and then brought their looted treasures to

Europe,

it is not surprising that it ends up in the hands

of Dr. he loves secrets

and That's exactly his thing, he's

mysterious.

This strange pitch-black object

connects two different cultures

that are thousands of kilometers

apart. Both believed it was a

supernatural gateway to the realm of

spirits. Who knows, maybe it's sitting

on the

other side of the mirror at this very moment the previous

Aztec owners and looks

across into our world