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Forty-four years ago today, a group of scientists gathered at the Arecibo Observatory, in the middle of the tropical forests of Puerto Rico, to attempt the humanity's first communication with an intelligent life beyond our own planet.
The three-minute radio message, a series of exactly 1,679 binary digits (a multiple of two prime numbers) that can be arranged in a 73-row, 23-column grid – was targeting a 25,000-year-old star group -Light of Earth.
Scientists sent the message via frequency-modulated radio waves to a group of stars 25,000 light-years apart to demonstrate the power of the Arecibo radio telescope, the world's largest and most powerful radio telescope. l & # 39; era.
This historical transmission was intended to demonstrate the capabilities of Arecibo's recently upgraded radio telescope, which was the largest and most powerful satellite dish in the world at that time.
"It was purely a symbolic event, to show that we could do it," said Donald Campbell, professor of astronomy at Cornell University, who was a research badociate at the observatory from Arecibo at the time. Nevertheless, some of those present were moved to tears.
The message itself was designed by a team of Cornell University researchers led by Dr. Frank Drake, the astronomer and astrophysicist responsible for the Drake equation, a means of Estimate the number of planets harboring extraterrestrial life in the galaxy of the Milky Way. "What could we do that would be spectacular?" Drake remembered. "We could send a message!"
Written with the help of Carl Sagan, the message itself could be arranged in a rectangular grid consisting of 0's and 1's to form a pictogram representing fundamental facts in mathematics, human DNA, the planet Earth's place in the solar system, as well as an image. of a human figure, as well as an image of the telescope itself.
Since the Arecibo message was sent, it has traveled only 259,000 billion kilometers, a fraction of its journey to its destination, which will take about 25,000 years.
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