Humanity’s Message to the Stars: An Update to the Golden Record--Part 2. Guidelines and Methodology for Image Selection

Humanity’s Message to the Stars (HMTS) is a contemporary successor to the Voyager Golden Record, designed to convey an updated, multidimensional portrait of Earth and its inhabitants to interstellar and intergenerational audiences. Building on the objectives, scope, and content framework established in Part I of this series, this Part II paper develops a transparent and defensible methodology for selecting images and multimedia materials for HMTS. Because it is impractical to compile and publish the full target archive of up to 1,000 images within a single manuscript, the paper focuses on the guiding principles, evaluation criteria, technical parameters, and ethical boundaries that govern image selection. Following a small number of prefatory images that establish planetary context, the proposed archive is organized into eight thematic categories: Geography, Biodiversity, Emotions, Creativity, Ways of Life, Social Structures, Scientific Advancements, and Logic and Mathematics. One representative sample figure, either single-panel or multi-panel, is provided for each category to illustrate the application of the framework rather than to constitute a finalized collection. After publication, the full image archive will be developed through a globally informed and participatory process, with clear documentation of provenance, permissions, and curatorial decisions, supporting an inclusive, ethically grounded, and intelligible visual narrative of Earth for any beings curious about the nature of our planet and its people.

Plain Language Summary 

In 1977, the Voyager spacecraft carried the Golden Record, a collection of sounds and images intended to represent Earth to distant civilizations. Humanity’s Message to the Stars (HMTS) builds on this idea by asking how Earth should be represented today, drawing on modern science, technology, and more inclusive global perspectives. Rather than assembling a complete image collection, this paper explains how images should be chosen. It establishes guidelines to ensure that future selections are scientifically accurate, culturally diverse, ethically responsible, and understandable across cultures and long periods of time. The framework organizes Earth’s story into eight broad categories, including geography, biodiversity, emotions, ways of life, creativity, social structures, scientific advancements, and logic and mathematics, and provides one provisional sample figure for each category to demonstrate the approach. The full image archive will be developed after publication with input from people around the world, creating a transparent and participatory way to represent Earth not only for potential observers beyond our planet, but also for future generations reflecting on how humanity chose to describe itself.