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The incredible story of the message that NASA sent to aliens in 1972

2021-03-13T23:22:37.410Z


What does the message that astronomer Carl Sagan sent to the aliens says. 03/13/2021 5:11 PM Clarín.com International Updated 03/13/2021 5:11 PM The question has been asked many times throughout history: is there life on other planets? The unknown remains, of course. The truth is that in the 1970s, shortly after the arrival of man on the Moon, NASA devised a new mission with two specific objectives. The first was to photograph Jupiter and study its atmosphere; the se


03/13/2021 5:11 PM

  • Clarín.com

  • International

Updated 03/13/2021 5:11 PM

The question has been asked many times throughout history:

is there life on other planets?

The unknown remains, of course.

The truth is that in the 1970s, shortly after the arrival of man on the Moon,

NASA

devised a

new mission

with two specific objectives.

The first was to photograph Jupiter and study its atmosphere;

the second, to

send a message to the aliens.

Artist's drawing of the Pioneer 10 probe passing Jupiter.

(Photo: AP)

The name of the ship was

Pioneer 10

.

It was actually an unmanned space probe.

Within it would travel this "interstellar note", which in time would be known as

"The Pioneer Plate"

.

How the idea of ​​sending a message to aliens came about

It was journalist

Eric Burgess

who had the original idea, although he never really thought it would convince the US space agency.

"If there is a chance that we will find

extraterrestrial life

, we should give them a message, like a greeting," he assured them.

What Burguess did not know at the time was that he would have a

very special help

: that of the renowned astronomer

Carl Sagan

, director of the Planetary Studies laboratory at Cornell University, who was his friend.

Astronomer Carl Sagan participated in the message that he would travel on the Pioneer probe.

(Photo: AP)

Sagan hired graphic designer

Frank Drake

and his first wife, artist and writer

Linda Salzman Sagan

, to create a

sketch

to present to NASA.

The illustrations were done on two gold plates.

Technically, they were two gold plates that had to

"summarize" what humans are like

and be ready before the launch of the

Pioneer 10

space probe

- the first to make direct observations and obtain close images of Jupiter - on March 2, 1972 , and its counterpart, the Pioneer 11, on April 5, 1973.


How to choose the message to send

The problem, now, was another: what

message to

put on the plates?

"We imagine that the most interesting thing for aliens would be to

know what we are like

," Drake, founder of the SETI Institute, told the BBC.

"The Pioneer Badge".

(Photo: NASA Ames)

And he detailed: "We think they would also want to know

where the message came from and when it had been sent

, since millions of years could pass before it was intercepted."

With this in mind, they set out to

map

the location of the Earth under the premise that science and mathematics were

universal languages

.

So they devised a scheme using

pulsars

(objects that emit regular pulses of different types of radiation) as

coordinates

within our Solar System.

The team made an interstellar map.

(Photo: NASA Ames)

The map was just one of the messages that would be sent.

In addition,

there were other drawings on the plates

.

Salzman Sagan was in charge of the illustrations, and did a job against the clock.

What were the other

illustrations of

?

From our Solar System, the path of the

Pioneer

, the silhouette of the probe, the figure of a man and another of a woman, the relative position of the Sun to the center of the galaxy and a diagram of the hyperfine transition of the neutral hydrogen, the most abundant element in our universe.

The Neutral Hydrogen Diagram.

(Photo: NASA Ames)

A controversy that was not foreseen

One of the drawings in particular unleashed a great controversy:

that of the body of man and woman

.

"I wanted each figure to have different racial features. The woman has very almond-shaped eyes and straight hair; I did it to the man with curly hair and a flattened nose, so that they would be

multicultural,

" he told the BBC.

The truth is that the

outfit was

a problem.

"How was I going to dress them? In tribal costumes? In haute couture clothes? No, we decided they should go

naked,

" added the artist.

The location of the Earth was detailed using pulsars.

(Photo: NASA Ames)

However, his uncertainty revolved around the

details

he would draw.

"Many of the statues I had been looking at didn't have very specific female genitalia ...

I didn't know what to do,

" Linda recalled.


And he detailed: "There were a few days, I think five, before they would let us put the plate on the spacecraft, and Carl told me:

'Don't do anything that could get us into trouble with NASA

or give anyone an excuse to don't put the badge on the spaceship. '"

The drawings of the man and the woman aroused an unthinkable controversy.

(Photo: NASA Ames)

The result:

Salzman Sagan did not draw female genitalia.

"NASA was very concerned that some members of Congress were very

conservative

and offended that taxpayer money was being used to send obscenities into space," Drake said.

A new problem: Who greeted the aliens?

Another question that Sagan's wife's drawing received was why he greeted the aliens: it

was the man who had his hand raised

, unlike the woman, who had both at her sides.

In Linda Salzman Sagan's illustration, the man was the one waving.

(Photo: NASA Ames)

"

Feminism was

just beginning to be a big topic of conversation and many women said, 'Well, why aren't we waving to the Universe,

why don't we have our hands raised?'

"Salzman Sagan said.

The plate attached to the Pioneer 10 probe. (Photo: NASA Ames)

"The problem was that if they both raised their hands, the aliens were going to think

that all of us on Earth walk with our hands raised

... we had to take those things into account," he explained.

The launch and a great mystery: did the message reach the aliens?

Finally, at 8:42 p.m. on Thursday, March 2, 1972, NASA launched the

Pioneer 10

probe

from Cape Canaveral, Florida (United States).

He did it on a rocket called the

"Atlas Centaur".

The Pioneer 10 probe was launched on Thursday, March 2, 1972. (Illustrative photo: EFE)

Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to pass through the

asteroid belt

, an achievement considered spectacular by experts.

Then it headed towards Jupiter, a planet it arrived on on December 3, 1973.

The spacecraft was the first to make

direct observations

and obtain close-up images of Jupiter.

In addition, he mapped the intense radiation belts of the gas giant planet, located the

planet's

magnetic field,

and established that it is predominantly a liquid planet.

Pioneer 10 helped determine that Jupiter is predominantly a liquid planet, among other things.

(Photo: Shutterstock)

Ten years later, in 1983, Pioneer 10 became the

first human-made object to

orbit Pluto, the most distant planet from the Sun.

"Pioneer 10 is an

explorer

in the true sense of the word. After it passed near Mars on its long journey in deep space, it ventured to places where

no object built by mankind had ever gone before,

" said the doctor. Colleen Hartman, director of NASA's Solar System Exploration Division in Washington.

He added: "It ranks among the most historic as well as the most

scientifically significant

explorations ever undertaken."


Where in the universe is the probe currently?

The spacecraft continued to do valuable research in the outer regions of the solar system until

its science mission ended on March 31, 1997.

NASA received the last message from the Pioneer 10 probe in 2003. (Photo: EFE)

In May 2003, NASA reported that

Pioneer 10's

nuclear power source

had decayed, and could not have enough power to send additional transmissions to Earth.

"After more than 30 years, it appears that the venerable 'Pioneer 10' spacecraft 

has sent its last signal to Earth,

" the statement read.

The

last

known of Pioneer 10 corresponds to information released by the US space agency last year.

"Pioneer 10 is heading towards the star Aldebaran in the constellation of Taurus and it

will take more than two million years to reach it."

Currently the Pioneer 10 probe is heading towards the star Aldebaran in the constellation of Taurus.

(Photo: NASA Ames)

How far can the probe go, then?

NASA graphed it in an

almost poetic

way

: "Pioneer 10 will continue to travel silently like a

ghost ship

through deep space in

interstellar space

."


Source: clarin

All news articles on 2021-03-13

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