‘Save the Whales’ was a shining success. Now can humpbacks save us from ourselves?

Programming Note: Watch The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper: What Whales Tell Us tonight at 8 p.m. ET/PT. Antarctic Peninsula CNN —

About 15 billion miles from where you sit, two 12-inch golden records are hurtling through outer space with multilingual greetings to the universe from 55 humans and one humpback whale.

With a playlist curated by astronomer Carl Sagan and inspired by the way humpbacks use low frequencies to send messages across entire oceans, they were launched on NASA’s two Voyager probes in 1977.

“As much as the sounds of any baleen whale, it is a love song cast upon the vastness of the deep.” Sagan wrote of the golden records.

And, since 95% of the planet’s biggest species had been harpooned to oblivion at the time, it could’ve easily been the kind of lov