In 1977, NASA launched the twin Voyager spacecraft, each carrying a copper phonograph record plated in gold. A committee chaired by Carl Sagan assembled a diverse collection of sights and sounds to convey a story of our world to any extraterrestrial travelers who might encounter the probes.
The committee faced a daunting challenge, however, in deciding how to represent human biology and civilization without relying on written language. To address this, they included a series of diagrams encoded in analog signals that could be converted into images. These diagrams depicted anatomical drawings of humans, the structure of DNA, and our solar system's location relative to distant pulsars. [Sentence 15] The final selection of images sought to present a hopeful, peaceful portrait of Earth, deliberately omitting depictions of war, disease, or poverty.
The writer wants to insert a sentence at [Sentence 15] that transitions from the technical description of the scientific diagrams to the emotional or philosophical purpose of the record's visual gallery. Which choice most effectively accomplishes this goal?
- AThese pulsars act as cosmic clocks, allowing any finder to determine precisely when the spacecraft was launched.
- While these scientific schematics provided objective data, the accompanying photographs aimed to capture the essence of human experience and emotion.Answer
- CScientific diagrams offered a technical overview, the photographs instead captured the daily lives and emotions of people across the globe.
- DAlthough the scientific schematics conveyed basic biological facts; the visual gallery was designed to portray the spirit of humanity.