Skip to comments.We Made Contact .... ?
Posted on 09/10/2001 7:06:01 AM PDT by ex-Texan
We made Contact.
By Dustin D. Brand; Owner AMO
We made contact - with aliens that is - this time they responded.
It all started in 1974, before SETI (The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) was even formed (1984), but at the beginning of the Arecibo project. At this time, upgrading the Arecibo station in the US Territory of Puerto Rico was done with the help of Frank Drake and Carl Sagan.
The Arecibo radio telescope dish to the left is the largest in the world. The first pulsar in a binary system was discovered in 1974 using Arecibo, leading to important confirmation of Einstein's theory of general relativity and a Nobel Prize for astronomers Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor in 1993.
The most interesting experiment in 1974 with Arecibo however was it's 3 Terawatt narrowband transmission of a "human template" in the direction of the M13 globular star cluster which consists of 300,000 stars and is in the constellation of Hercules.
The human template transmission was made originally by Frank Drake and with great cooperation from Carl Sagan, whos book, later translated into the movie "Contact" was loosely based. The name of Carl Sagan to this date reminds many of "Contact" and it only seems fitting he was part of the November 16th, 1974 human template transmission from Arecibo. The journey of the human template message from Arecibo would take 22,800 light years to reach Messier 13. It took a tiny fraction of that to receive a reply however.
The human template, originally sent in 1974 by Arecibo is shown to the right. With the help of Richard C. Hoagland, in 1971 templates were added to United States spacecraft, but the human template transmission in 1974 was sent at the speed of light and in binary form. The blank space in the image represents a binary 0 and the solid blocks represent binary 1's.
The Arecibo message included, among other things, the binary equivalant of the numbers 1-10 showing a "base of 10" identifing our math system and a way to decipher the message. Below these numbers identified the most common atomic numbers in life that we knew at that time. We transmitted our atomic numbers for Hydrogen, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen and Phosphorus. We didn't stop there and added the molecular formulas for our human DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid).
In 1974, we knew the estimated number of nucleotides in our DNA, and we transmitted those as well and you can also see our "Double Helix" DNA Strand. We also sent, as the human race, our average height, and a rough proportional representation of our bodies. The population of our planet earth, which in 1974 was estimated as 4.29 Billion Humans was also transmitted. For the source of the transmission, planet Earth, Arecibo, we sent our solar system identifing the third planet from the Sun - Earth - just under our feet. Also with the source was the Arecibo Telescope, with it's diameter.
Expecting the transmission to take 22,800 Light Years might have been an exageration when, in reality it may reach life much earlier. In fact, the transmission has now traveled nearly 27 light years from Earth (156 trillion + miles) - towards M13, and has passed the distance of the closest star from our Sun which is 4.3 light years away. It takes only approximately 1 minute to reach Mars travelling at light speed for perspective, or 1.23 seconds to reach the moon.
Einstein as we all know has been extremely important to Science. The unexpected coorelation between Einstein and Arecibo in 1974 is evident as a Nobel prize was awarded due to Arecibo discovery of the Puslar in a "Binary system" and the astronomers helping to prove his Theory of General Releativity. It is a basic postulate of the theory of relativity that the speed of light is constant. Einstein even intensified all the "time travel" talk amongst scientists. Conicidence about Einsteins' connection to the 1974 Arecibo transmission? There is no such thing as a coincidence. It would take 22,800 light years at the speed of light to reach M13, yet we have crop formations 1 year apart at almost 26 years and almost 27, a factored difference of more than 1,000. In 1916 Einstein published his expanded General/Special Theory of Reletivity to include gravitation as a determiner of the curvature of a space-time continuum - time travel.
Many changes in 1974 to the Arecibo transmitter were made, enabling it to broadcast signals at a power of 20 terawatts. (1 Terawatt = 1 Trillion Watts) or more power than all the power outlets in the world at the time combined. The human template message marks the completion of such upgrades and the excitement of the achievement.
The Arecibo Human Template message was transmitted on November 16th, 1974 and consisted of 1,679 pulses of binary code (0's and 1's). The transmission lasted a little under three mintues (167.9 seconds) and was completed by modulating the frequency back and forth by about 10Hz (or 10 bits per second). The Arecibo Human Template was transmitted on a frequency of 2,388 MegaHertz which is significant. Arecibo is capable of the range between 1,000-3,000 MHz. 1,679 digits in the transmission are extremely important because 1679 is the result of 2 prime numbers, 23 and 73 or 23*73. Since math is about as universal of a language as we can determine, the binary code was seperated into a matrix of 23x73 columns or squares creating the "template" or "grid".
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Oh god, is this a word problem? I forgot to study!
Well, you have about one lightyear left, if I read this right. lol. I'm also bookmarking this one.
Umm, this kind of post is little different really from those people who believe Madonna is in love with them, or Julia Roberts is in love with them...
Only instead of sending love letters to Hollywood and believing they're getting "responses" these people are sending bursts of radio waves to space and believing they're getting "responses."
I'd say you're about as likely to get an "intelligent" response from this stuff as you would if you'd sent a post card to Mariah Carey... Mark W.
are you LOGGED IN?
And they said, in a really scratchy and static-y transmission:
I'll have a quarter pounder with cheese, no ketchup, and can you supersize the fries and Coke?
Is Farrakhan in charge of this project? We are transmitting in Mhz and they are responding in Hz? What is wrong with this picture? I think we would have better luck putting a note in a bottle and launching it into space.
Whenever I see "it's" (the contraction for "it is") confused with "its" (meaning "belonging to it"), I immediately lose 50% of my interest in anything further the writer has to say.
The yacking black lady ROCKS!
(Faux-Jamaican accent) Miss CLEO here wich ya, ya know, I know where ya lost ya keys so call me now mon.
Hey, Miss Cleo turned me into a newt!
Mark W.(I got better...)
We also transmitted the capabilities and locations of all our defense installations and closed the message with this final friendly plea: "Occupants of Earth will soon be unarmed. Please do not abduct or invade us." :-P
I think someone else should get the job.... much more qualified in all that complicated Outer Space "stuff"
"Will it be able to see the flag the astronauts left?"- Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Mars)
commenting on the Mars rover.
You're giving them free military intelligence, and just asking to be conquered and eaten.
Take us to your leader Now, we waited the last 8 yrs out!
Thanks you very much but I am sure you meant the basis of our old math system. The new math will allow you to use what ever base you desire, hoping somehow to justify 2+2 = 5. Fortunately, we are still using the old math system, except of course in our measurements.
Generally, I hate puns, but I liked that one.
If I remember correctly, you and I rarely agree. Add this to the list. :-)