Flashback Friday - 1974 Arecibo Telescope Sends First Message To Space

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E.T. phone home... brings on a new meaning when we are trying to phone E.T.  Well on Nov. 16, 1974, it was the very first time humans had sent an intentional message to outer space with the intention of it reaching alien life forms.  They pointed it towards a cluster called M13.  This star cluster is roughly 21,000 light years away from us. That means it will take 21,000 years to get there...! So don't expect it to ever reach there in our lifetime. 

Source: Wikipedia

So what exactly did they send?  It was a simple image of about 1,679 bits or about 210 Bytes.  To put that into perspective, a standard picture from a smart phone is 3-5 million Bytes.  So this is a very small picture.  It was transmitted at 10 bits per second. It took almost 3 mins to send.  Now days most cell phones can transmit even up to 30 million bits per second or more. I think now we can send a 3MB picture in less than 3 sec.  We've come a long way with technology!


The picture they sent consisted of : the Arecibo telescope, our solar system, DNA, a stick figure of a human, and some of the biochemicals of earthly life.  It was set up to be 73 lines with 23 characters per line.  They did this to hopefully help the aliens decode the message since they are prime numbers.

Source: SETI.org

Honestly, I am not too convinced someone or something could make any sense of this image other than knowing it came from some intelligent source.  But I guess you never know!  Perhaps E.T. would have some sophisticated tech to be able to decipher this little image.  Our future generations 42,000 years from now may find out. It will take 21,000 years to get there and 21,000 years to get back.  So don't hold your breath!

#RookieGuru
#GiveMeMore

https://www.seti.org/seti-institute/project/details/arecibo-message

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