[sulam]

I agree with you, completely. In fact, more than completely -- it's likely that there are a large number of signals that we didn't even think of as signals that a reasonably intelligent, resourceful alien detective could use to find us. My mind immediately jumps to the specific chemical composition of the metals, for instance. Or perhaps remnant zodiacal dust grains that will certainly be on it. Even simple orbital backtracking is likely to be successful on any reasonable timescale (and for unreasonable timescales, who's to say we won't be very obvious in ways that are much, much faster to be received than Voyager).

[throwaway1X2]

Excellent point, in the heat of many discussions whether even a studied being of the same species [human] would get the hydrogen state reference, it never occurred that even without decoding anything nor putting any styluses anywhere, just the mere possession of the record and, for example, analyzing primordial traces could give us away... And I mentioned the C14 earth-bound analogy, damn! :)

[sulam]

I'm picturing an alien researcher saying:

"well, clearly it comes from a solar system orbiting a G-class star. There are 45,000 of those within a reasonable range based on the rate of micro-pitting on the protected vs unprotected surfaces. It seems to have been launched with an engine powered by hydrocarbons, and clearly they have been recently experimenting with nuclear weapons. Let's identify a candidate star with a habitable zone planet that shows signs of a run-away greenhouse effect and global thermonuclear exchange. Because clearly they have self-extincted, otherwise we would have already contacted them through other means."