"Hellos" From Yesterday: Interstellar Messages To The Search For Extraterrestrial Life.

Jaime Cross

     Over the years there has been a worry. A worry that we as a species would cease to exist. World ending events have permeated the science-fiction community for as long as most of us remember. Each story seems to depict the end of humanity in various ways. One being natural events such as climate change or an asteroid impact. Let's say humanity does come to an end, all humanity has been wiped out and Earth has lost its ability to support life. What would we have to say "Hello, we existed". We, fortunately, have five physical probes that have gone interstellar. Each with their own plaque that depicts what is or what was humanity.

     Let's start by going in-depth about the Arecibo Message shot into deep space by Frank Drake and Carl Sagan. This message is the simplest of the many interstellar messages. This specific message was shot to the M-13 star cluster in search of an extraterrestrial response. Yet the message won't reach the star cluster for another 25,000 years. The message was written in Binary, which basically is a pattern of "1's" and "0's".  Each message that I go over in this blog post is more or less the same thing. Each saying in their own way that we exist. Most, of course, has been developed by the infamous Carl Sagan.

     This picture shows the process of the message being translated from binary to the decoded form to show the message. All of the images on the decoded message are in binary format due to the unknown ways of communicating. Starting from the top, we have the numbers one through ten in the form of binary. Continuing onto the purple shape, this signifies the elements of DNA. Basically "what script we run from". The green shapes symbolized the molecular formula in which DNA is comprised of. The structure of DNA symbolized next is called the double helix. Basically, most of this message is to show what makes us, us. Next, the red man in the middle symbolizes humanity as a whole. The symbol on the left of the man is the average height of a male, being 5ft and 9.4in. The symbol on the right of the man is the population of Earth in the year 1974, which was 4.3 billion. Just under that are a bunch of yellow dots, these make up a map of the solar system. Much like the map of the solar system below on the Pioneer plaques. The final purple marking resembles a telescope. Supposedly the same telescope that found the M-13 star cluster. The message won't arrive for another 25,000 years, so if we were to get a response, it won't come for 50,000 years.

     What about physical messages, messages that are able to withstand the test of time no matter what happens down on earth. A time capsule perhaps? That's what Lageos-1 is essentially supposed to do. This satellite is a device that can pinpoint locations with lasers, yet the more exciting thing is that it has a plaque that is for either us in the future or aliens. This specific satellite is close enough to earth that it still gets affected by the Earths atmosphere. This satellite's orbit will decay to an orbit to which it will reenter the atmosphere (assuming there is still one left) in 8 million years. There is a plaque onboard once again designed by Carl Sagan to show what Earth looked like when Pangea was in existence. Then it depicts the present layout of our planet. Then finally it shows a prediction of what earth would look like when it returns home.

     Interstellar probes take a long time to leave our solar system. The pioneer probes have been in service since 1958. The pioneer one was the first spacecraft launched by NASA, creating the long string of missions to come out of the Jet Propulsion Laboratories. Yet there is something special about the Pioneer probes. For the very few probes that went interstellar, there has been a plaque that has a brief snippet of humanity. Mostly designed and created by Carl Sagan. These plaques are mostly designed to describe what humanity is or was too intelligent life.

       Now for these to be the only message onboard the spacecraft it has to "explain" two things. What sent the message and where we are. Yet how do you do that without using the language we invented? There is no universal language that we all know, so we have to use math and physics. Scientists have an understanding that physics and math are the same universally. If this is true then that plaque would make sense to intelligent life. Of course with a few hours of just looking at it, it may seem that we are just sending a set of science problems to aliens, yet it is quite simple when you figure it out.

     The two circles at the top represent a hyperfine transition of a neutral hydrogen atom. Which basically is an electron looping back and forth. Then just under that is a map showing the position of fourteen pulsars relative to our sun. Pulsars being a compact sphere of matter the size of a city, yet has more mass than the sun. Pulsars are a neutron star that rotates at a rapid pace radiating pulses of radio waves up to a thousand pulses per second. They can be seen from the earth when you stargaze, yet they seem to be like tiny flickering stars. This is so because they spin, they spin due to the rotation of the star before it collapsed into a neutron star. Their speeds vary depending on the rotation before the collapse. If you are familiar with Neutron stars they have two main beams of light that radiate through two opposite ends of the main body, and due to the spinning, they can only show one side at a time per spin and thus the illusion of them flickering.

     Just under the Pulsar map is the map of our solar system with the trajectory of the Pioneer spacecraft that went interstellar. This feature has been criticized by many due to how human it may seem. An arrow, something to point in a direction. Originally it came from a spear. A spear was used to throw in a direction of what they were hunting. Therefore an arrow is only for civilizations that hunted and gathered. An origin that may not have happened for any intelligent life that may find these plaques. Also, notice the shading of the planets. The first four are black in shade resembling a solid surface. The next four are outlined and that resembles the four gas giants toward the back of the solar system. Then poor Pluto in the back which is no longer a planet. Next is the size comparison between the spacecraft and humans. Obviously, the spacecraft is larger. Yet the average size of the probes today is much larger than the one these plaques carry. The regular size of the normal satellite is two times the size of the plaque.

     Next, is the very popular string of probes that launched in the 70's called Voyager. Voyager 1 is the first probe that left the solar system despite the pioneer missions leaving earth first. This is due to the advancement in technology NASA between the years of 1958 to 1977. Being the most popular probe it made headlines time and time again, but something special was onboard. A golden record, a golden record that had sounds of humanity such as birds chirping or the water flowing. It also had a speech from the President at the time, Jimmy Carter. A famous line from that speech that still resonates in many people's minds today is "This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe."

     There are instructions on how to play the record, of course not using English but pictures and diagrams like mentioned before. These two space crafts are past Pluto and are bound to shut down in a couple of years as they travel further and further away from our sun and into the Kyper Belt and Ort cloud. There is no hope for finding these two spacecraft again, yet hope for other life forms to, as it was meant for. As we learn more and more about our solar system we tend to stray from the idea to put messages for extraterrestrial life on our probes.

     What if something finds these messages? Aliens? Future humans? Who knows, maybe it will never be found, yet for the sake of the argument lets say aliens do. What would we do? Well, the common answer would be we try to communicate with it. While that would be good, we have no real plan for alien encounters. Yes, we have laws that dictate space and exploration, but what would happen if they find us? No real plan is set in place for an E.T encounter. Groups like SETI would do the job. They have created a plan to set in place when an alien invasion OR an alien makes contact. Now, most science-fiction films depict aliens as some evil creatures that would come and invade earth. Yet, would that really happen? let us take a step back and look at the history of human exploration.

      When Columbas came to the new world and found native people what happened? He killed them and took their land. What happened to the early settlers of America as expansion drove west? They slaughtered hundreds of native people. I have observed that science-fiction scenarios where the alien's attack is a reflection of our dark humanity. Almost every single time we go to a new land we nearly wipe out the indigenous population. Aliens, of course, are not human (if they exist). Would they truly want to end us? Or would they want to make peace and "trade" with us. No one knows, of course, because we haven't "made contact".

     This brings me to another point. There is a very well thought out idea called The Fermi Paradox which basically says "Where is everyone?''. Where is everyone! Since the creation of radio, we have had a "bubble" of sorts, where anyone can tune in and listen to a podcast or a radio station. This bubble spans 200 light-years across from side to side. If that is so then where are all the aliens? That portion compared to our galaxy is small. It's about the size of a doorknob on a door. It's a small area, yet it's a dense region of planets and stars. Yes, they still might be in their early stages of life or still developing technology to reach us, or we just need to wait until their radio message gets to us. Yet if there was life and they did have the advanced technology why haven't we gotten their radio waves yet? Now with these new developments in our solar system concerning life, we may not be alone in our solar system, and if this is true then there has to be more out there. Are we an early product of life or are we the last, just doomed to die here on earth. Yet as far as we know we are alone. Bill Nye said in the documentary called The Mars Generation "There are two questions that get everybody. Where did we come from and are we alone in the universe? If we were to find evidence of life, or better still evidence of life on Mars today, it would change the course of human history". It would change the way we think about the universe if we find life it would make us wonder is there anymore?

     There is another quote from Bill Nye from the same documentary saying "The Earth is not flat. We are not the center of it. The sun is the center of it. Wait the sun is not the center of it. We are just one more sun in this galactic disk, And we aren't the only galaxy, not by any means we are just these specks on a speck orbiting a speck in the middle of speechlessness...yet we can understand that..." We may be alone, we may not. As sad as it sounds, we may not live to see life from other worlds. Maybe no one would. yet if we do, it would change the world.

     Thank you for returning to The All Encompassing Space Blog! Today's post was longer than usual and this will happen often. Subscribe to get my posts in your inbox and I will catch you next time on The All Encompassing Space Blog!