How long does it take to read Murmurs of Earth?
The Voyager Intersteller Record
Carl Sagan, F. D. Drake, Ann Druyan, Timothy Ferris, Jon Lomberg, Linda Salzman Sagan
Murmurs of Earth by Carl Sagan, F. D. Drake, Ann Druyan, Timothy Ferris, Jon Lomberg, Linda Salzman Sagan takes about 5 hours to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours
A weekend read
First published 1978. 273 pages, about 75,075 words.
10 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 8 hours 21 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 8 minutes |
The page count is the median across 9 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Preface: On August 20th and September 5th, 1977, two extraordinary spacecraft called Voyager were launched to the stars. After what promises to be a detailed and thoroughly dramatic exploration of the outer solar system from Jupiter to Uranus between 1979 and 1986, these space vehicles will slowly leave the solar systems - emissaries of the Earth to the realm of the stars. Affixed to each Voyager craft is a gold-coated copper phonograph record as a message to possible extra-terrestrial civilizations that might encounter the spacecraft in some distant space and time. Each record contains 118 photographs of our planet, ourselves and our civilization; almost 90 minutes of the world's greatest music; and evolutionary audio essay on "The Sounds of Earth"; and greetings in almost sixty human languages (and one whale language), including salutations from the President of the United States and the Secretary General of the United Nations. This book is an account, written by those chiefly responsible for the contents of the Voyager Record, of why we did it, how we selected the repertoire, and precisely what the record contains.
Subjects: Voyager Project, Long Now Manual for Civilization, Earth (planet)
