A Cosmic Message: Humanity’s Attempt to Reach Aliens
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The Quest for Cosmic Communication
Have you ever pondered what items would encapsulate the essence of humanity? One might gravitate towards masterpieces of art and literature to reflect human creativity, or perhaps toward groundbreaking achievements in science and technology. Personally, I would select a transistor as a symbol of our technological prowess, marking the dawn of the information age. Additionally, a vial of smallpox vaccine would be essential, as it represents our triumph over a disease that claimed countless lives and was the first to be eradicated.
But imagine an alien civilization with no understanding of human language, biology, or history. This was the challenge faced by astronomers Frank Drake and Carl Sagan in the 1970s, who were tasked with sending messages into the cosmos. The United States aimed to communicate with any intelligent extraterrestrial beings that might come across our messages. Drake and Sagan worked to create representations of humanity that would be comprehensible to these alien minds. Read on to discover the results of their efforts!
The Pioneer Plaques
Drake and Sagan designed a golden plaque featuring pictorial symbols intended to convey human intelligence. In 1972, this plaque was affixed to the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, followed by a similar plaque on Pioneer 11 in 1973. These plaques, now known as the Pioneer Plaques, encapsulate humanity and our scientific advancements using five key pictorial symbols:
- A depiction of energy transitions in hydrogen, the universe's most prevalent element.
- A pulsar map illustrating the relative positions of pulsars in relation to our Sun, establishing our location in the cosmos. Pulsars, which are highly magnetized rotating neutron stars, emit powerful beams of electromagnetic radiation that serve as cosmic reference points.
- Nude representations of a man and a woman alongside a silhouette of the Pioneer spacecraft.
- A schematic of our Solar System, indicating the spacecraft's trajectory.
Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 marked humanity's first manmade objects to achieve escape velocity from our Solar System and venture into interstellar space. The plaques were crafted as a welcoming gesture to any intelligent extraterrestrial life forms that might encounter them, akin to a message in a bottle drifting through the vastness of space.
The Golden Records
Building on the concept of the Pioneer Plaques, Drake and Sagan introduced the Golden Records. These records, phonograph discs, were included with both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft launched in 1977. Much like the Pioneer Plaques, the Golden Records featured a pulsar map and a hydrogen atom diagram, but this time, the hydrogen diagram served a crucial role in decoding the record’s contents.
When an electron in hydrogen transitions from an excited state to its ground state, it emits a photon at a frequency of 1420 MHz, known as the fundamental hydrogen frequency. This frequency is significant because:
- Hydrogen constitutes roughly 74% of all matter in the universe, excluding dark matter.
- Advanced alien astronomers are likely to have studied this element extensively.
Consequently, the fundamental hydrogen frequency is a logical measure for establishing a universal time standard for extraterrestrial civilizations. One cycle of this frequency lasts approximately 0.70 billionths of a second, acting as a "fundamental hydrogen time-unit." The record's perimeter encodes the number of these time-units required to complete one full rotation of the record, approximately 3.6 seconds. To facilitate the aliens, a record player was included, already set to play from the start.
If extraterrestrials successfully deciphered how to operate the record, they would be greeted with messages in 51 different languages, including ancient Sumerian and modern Mandarin. The record also features various sounds from Earth, such as crickets and the crackling of fire.
Moreover, the Golden Records contain instructions for assembling images from the recorded signals, showcasing a total of 116 images that range from depictions of our Solar System to everyday human activities like eating and drinking.
A Long Journey Ahead
Designed to endure for about a billion years in space, the Golden Records and their accompanying Voyager spacecraft were not directed toward any specific star. However, Voyager 1 is expected to pass within a light-year of the star Gliese 445 in the constellation Camelopardalis in roughly 40,000 years.
Thus, while the chances of alien life discovering these records are slim, the messages were sent with an air of optimism and curiosity. They could potentially reveal our existence to extraterrestrial beings. What are your thoughts on this endeavor? Do you believe it was a wise decision to send such messages? I welcome your serious comments and will endeavor to respond to them!
If you found this article interesting, you might also enjoy:
- The Fermi Paradox: Where Are All the Aliens? — Exploring the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
- 3 Reasons Why Aliens Wouldn’t Visit Earth, Even If They Could — Speculative reasoning behind the absence of alien visitors.
- 3 Historical Instances When Scientists Believed We Made Contact With Aliens — A look at past encounters with the unknown.
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