ARECIBO MESSAGE, AN INTERSTELLAR RADIO MESSAGE

Today, The Grandma has received the wonderful visit of one of her closest friends, Joseph de Ca'th Lon.

Josep likes Astronomy and they have been talking about the Arecibo message, that was broadcast from Puerto Rico, on a day like today in 1974.

The Arecibo message is an interstellar radio message carrying basic information about humanity and Earth that was sent to globular star cluster M13 in 1974.

It was meant as a demonstration of human technological achievement, rather than a real attempt to enter into a conversation with extraterrestrials. It has been noted that the low resolution of the image makes it infeasible for any extraterrestrial recipients to attach the intended meaning to most of its elements.

The message was broadcast into space a single time via frequency modulated radio waves at a ceremony to mark the remodeling of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico on 16 November 1974.

The message was aimed at the current location of M13, about 25,000 light years from Earth, because M13 was a large and relatively close collection of stars that was available in the sky at the time and place of the ceremony. When correctly translated into graphics, characters, and spaces, the 1,679 bits of data contained within the message form the image shown here.

The content of the Arecibo message was designed by Frank Drake, then at Cornell University and creator of the Drake equation, who wrote the message with help from Carl Sagan and others.

The message was meant more as a demonstration of human technological achievement than a serious attempt to enter into a conversation with possible extraterrestrials. Because globular cluster M13, at which the message was aimed, is more than 25,000 light-years from Earth, the message, traveling at approximately the speed of light, will take at least 25,000 years to arrive there.

By that time, the core of M13 will no longer be in precisely the same location because of the orbit of the star cluster around the galactic center. Even so, the proper motion of M13 is small, so the message will still arrive near the center of the cluster.

More information: SETI Institute

The message consists of seven parts that encode the following (from the top down in the image):

-The numbers one (1) to ten (10) (white)

-The atomic numbers of the elements hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus, which make up deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) (purple)

-The formulas for the chemical compounds that make up the nucleotides of DNA (green)

-The estimated number of DNA nucleotides in the human genome, and a graphic of the double helix structure of DNA (white and blue, respectively)

-The dimension (physical height) of an average man (blue/white), a graphic figure of a human being (red), and the human population of Earth (white)

-A graphic of the Solar System, indicating which of the planets the message is coming from (yellow)

-A graphic of the Arecibo radio telescope and the dimension (the physical diameter) of the transmitting antenna dish (purple, white, and blue)

The entire message consisted of 1,679 binary digits, approximately 210 bytes, transmitted at a frequency of 2,380 MHz and modulated by shifting the frequency by 10 Hz, with a power of 450 kW.

The ones and zeros were transmitted by frequency shifting at the rate of 10 bits per second. The total broadcast was less than three minutes.

The number 1,679 was chosen because it is a semiprime (the product of two prime numbers), to be arranged rectangularly as 73 rows by 23 columns. The alternative arrangement, 23 rows by 73 columns, produces an unintelligible set of characters (as do all other X/Y formats).

More information: NAIC

I think the universe is pure geometry -basically,
a beautiful shape twisting around and dancing over space-time.

Antony Garrett Lisi

CARL EDWARD SAGAN, SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATION

Today, The Grandma continues enjoying the visit of one of her closest friends, Joseph de Ca'th Lon.

Joseph likes Astronomy, History and Archaeology and they have been talking about Carl Edward Sagan, the American astronomer and science communicator who died on a day like today in 1996.

Joseph and The Grandma think that the best way to pay homage to Carl Sagan is talking about his life and his career.

Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934-December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, poet, and science communicator.

His best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation.

Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space: the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. Sagan argued the now-accepted hypothesis that the high surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to and calculated using the greenhouse effect.

Initially an associate professor at Harvard and later at Cornell, from 1976 to his death, he was the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences at the latter. Sagan published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books.

More information: Rolling Stones

He wrote many popular science books, such as The Dragons of Eden, Broca's Brain and Pale Blue Dot, and narrated and co-wrote the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. The most widely watched series in the history of American public television, Cosmos has been seen by at least 500 million people across 60 different countries.

The book Cosmos was published to accompany the series. He also wrote the science fiction novel Contact, the basis for a 1997 film of the same name. His papers, containing 595,000 items, are archived at The Library of Congress.

Sagan advocated scientific skeptical inquiry and the scientific method, pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). He spent most of his career as a professor of astronomy at Cornell University, where he directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies.

Sagan and his works received numerous awards and honors, including the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal, the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for his book The Dragons of Eden, and, regarding Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, two Emmy Awards, the Peabody Award, and the Hugo Award.

Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Samuel Sagan, was an immigrant garment worker from Kamianets-Podilskyi, then in the Russian Empire, in today's Ukraine. His mother, Rachel Molly Gruber, was a housewife from New York. Carl was named in honor of Rachel's biological mother, Chaiya Clara, in Sagan's words, the mother she never knew.

Sagan had lived in Bensonhurst, where he went to David A. Boody Junior High School. He had his bar mitzvah in Bensonhurst when he turned 13. The following year, 1948, his family moved to the nearby town of Rahway, New Jersey, for his father's work, where Sagan then entered Rahway High School. He graduated in 1951. Rahway was an older industrial town, and the Sagans were among its few Jewish families.

More information: Wired

Sagan attended the University of Chicago, which was one of the few colleges he applied to that would, despite his excellent high-school grades, consider admitting a 16-year-old. Its chancellor, Robert Maynard Hutchins, had recently retooled the undergraduate College of the University of Chicago into an ideal meritocracy built on Great Books, Socratic dialogue, comprehensive examinations and early entrance to college with no age requirement. The school also employed a number of the nation's leading scientists, including Enrico Fermi and Edward Teller, along with operating the famous Yerkes Observatory.

In 1980 Sagan co-wrote and narrated the award-winning 13-part PBS television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which became the most widely watched series in the history of American public television until 1990. The show has been seen by at least 500 million people across 60 countries. The book, Cosmos, written by Sagan, was published to accompany the series.

Speaking about his activities in popularizing science, Sagan said that there were at least two reasons for scientists to share the purposes of science and its contemporary state. Simple self-interest was one: much of the funding for science came from the public, and the public therefore had the right to know how the money was being spent. If scientists increased public admiration for science, there was a good chance of having more public supporters. The other reason was the excitement of communicating one's own excitement about science to others.

After suffering from myelodysplasia for two years and receiving three bone marrow transplants from his sister, Sagan died from pneumonia at the age of 62, at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, on December 20, 1996. His burial took place at Lake View Cemetery in Ithaca, New York.

More information: Speakola

The universe is not required to be in perfect
harmony with human ambition.

Carl Sagan