Arecibo Observatory message
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The Arecibo Observatory message was a message sent out by the members of Arecibo Observatory in November 19, 1974 to the globular star cluster M13[1] for a ceremony to mark the remodeling of the Arecibo radio telescope. The message consisted of 1679 binary digits (equivalent to nearly 205 bytes) transmitted at a frequency of 2380 MHz and modulated by shifting the frequency by 10 Hz, with a power of 1000 kWatt. The beam was extremely narrow (giving a power equivalent to 20 trillion Watts if it were omnidirectional) making it the strongest man-made signal ever sent. It was meant to be picked up by extraterrestrials so that they could find Earth and locate the source of the message.[2] The leader of the project was Frank Drake, who also set up Project Ozma in 1960.[2]
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[edit] Travel
The message is still traveling through space as of today, and it is highly improbable that it has passed any stars with planets orbiting them. Even if it has passed an extrasolar planet, the odds are very slim that any intelligent, if that, organisms reside on the planet. And, by pushing it, it is even slimmer that the intelligent species has already advanced to picking up radio signals.[2] Since the destination, M13, is 25,000 light-years away from Earth, it will take 25,000 years for the signal to reach it.[3] The message was sent at about "a million times stronger than the typical TV transmission"[3]. It is stronger than the Sun's radio waves and could be recieved through technology similar to that of the radio telescopes of Earth.[3]
[edit] Interpretation
- "We eventually learned that nobody could interpret all of the message; each scientist only could interpret the part relevant to their discipline."
- —Frank Drake(source)
When the signal was finished, scientists were asked if they could interpret the pictures and other objects in the message. Each scientist interpreted something different[4].
[edit] Actual reading
The signal was made of several parts.
- At the top, it reads the numbers 1-10, showing our number system[5]
- Next, it shows the atomic numbers of several significant biological elements[5]
- Formulas for several different chemicals[5]
- The recognizable "double helix" of DNA[5]
- A human, with the population and height defined beside him[5]
- The Solar System, with Earth more upward[5]
- The Arecibo dish[5]
[edit] Binary code
The message's binary code is printed below.[6]
00000010101010000000000001010000010100000001001000100010001001011001010101010101010100100100000000000000000000000000000000000001100000000000000000001101000000000000000000011010000000000000000001010100000000000000000011111000000000000000000000000000000001100001110001100001100010000000000000110010000110100011000110000110101111101111101111101111100000000000000000000000000100000000000000000100000000000000000000000000001000000000000000001111110000000000000111110000000000000000000000011000011000011100011000100000001000000000100001101000011000111001101011111011111011111011111000000000000000000000000001000000110000000001000000000001100000000000000010000011000000000011111100000110000001111100000000001100000000000001000000001000000001000001000000110000000100000001100001100000010000000000110001000011000000000000000110011000000000000011000100001100000000011000011000000100000001000000100000000100000100000001100000000100010000000011000000001000100000000010000000100000100000001000000010000000100000000000011000000000110000000011000000000100011101011000000000001000000010000000000000010000011111000000000000100001011101001011011000000100111001001111111011100001110000011011100000000010100000111011001000000101000001111110010000001010000011000000100000110110000000000000000000000000000000000011100000100000000000000111010100010101010101001110000000001010101000000000000000010100000000000000111110000000000000000111111111000000000000111000000011100000000011000000000001100000001101000000000101100000110011000000011001100001000101000001010001000010001001000100100010000000010001010001000000000000100001000010000000000001000000000100000000000000100101000000000001111001111101001111000
[edit] Or
00000010101010000000000 00101000001010000000100 10001000100010010110010 10101010101010100100100 00000000000000000000000 00000000000011000000000 00000000001101000000000 00000000001101000000000 00000000010101000000000 00000000011111000000000 00000000000000000000000 11000011100011000011000 10000000000000110010000 11010001100011000011010 11111011111011111011111 00000000000000000000000 00010000000000000000010 00000000000000000000000 00001000000000000000001 11111000000000000011111 00000000000000000000000 11000011000011100011000 10000000100000000010000 11010000110001110011010 11111011111011111011111 00000000000000000000000 00010000001100000000010 00000000001100000000000 00001000001100000000001 11111000001100000011111 00000000001100000000000 00100000000100000000100 00010000001100000001000 00001100001100000010000 00000011000100001100000 00000000001100110000000 00000011000100001100000 00001100001100000010000 00010000001000000001000 00100000001100000000100 01000000001100000000100 01000000000100000001000 00100000001000000010000 00010000000000001100000 00001100000000110000000 00100011101011000000000 00100000001000000000000 00100000111110000000000 00100001011101001011011 00000010011100100111111 10111000011100000110111 00000000010100000111011 00100000010100000111111 00100000010100000110000 00100000110110000000000 00000000000000000000000 00111000001000000000000 00111010100010101010101 00111000000000101010100 00000000000000101000000 00000000111110000000000 00000011111111100000000 00001110000000111000000 00011000000000001100000 00110100000000010110000 01100110000000110011000 01000101000001010001000 01000100100010010001000 00000100010100010000000 00000100001000010000000 00000100000000010000000 00000001001010000000000 01111001111101001111000
[edit] See also
[edit] References
