What message did humans send to would-be aliens?
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(CNN) --
Space researchers want to send aliens a coded message, including illustrations of naked humans.
The proposal, "A Beacon in the Galaxy" (BITG), was submitted by 11 researchers from various institutions, including NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
It was published this week on Arxiv, a repository of open access scientific articles.
It proposes a binary-encoded message "developed for transmission to extraterrestrial intelligences in the Milky Way galaxy," and will include scientific concepts including the human form, according to the proposal.
It will build on earlier signals sent into space, primarily the Arecibo message, an interstellar radio message sent to the globular star cluster M13 in 1974, the researchers said.
China's FAST Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope undergoes maintenance in southwest China's Guizhou Province on Jan 11, 2020.
NASA has previously sent aspects of humanity into space.
The 2021 Lucy Mission included a poem by National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman, lyrics and quotes from the Beatles, and a fossil belonging to the ancient human ancestor that gave the mission its name.
Voyager 1 and 2 carried gold-plated phonograph records with images and sounds intended to reflect human culture.
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This is the message that humans sent to possible aliens on the Voyager 1 and 2 probes
The BITG proposal plans to set aside human culture and language, focusing instead on concepts that may be more understandable to extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI): mathematics and physics.
"Although the concept of mathematics in human terms is potentially unrecognizable to ETIs, the binary is likely to be universal across all intelligence," the researchers said.
Therefore, the message was encoded in the binary language of zeros and ones used in computer systems.
The message includes a time stamp, a location stamp, visual representations of the double helix structure of DNA and a hydrogen atom, visual explanations of algebra and other mathematical operations, an illustration of the solar system, a map of the earth, and , of course, a smiling illustration of two human bodies, one male and one female.
The couple greets the viewer.
"This information is part of the basics that is expected from any message to an ETI, as it allows the recognition of our appearance, a detail of us in which a given ETI would be interested, relevant in case more exchanges are established, or if one day we meet physically," the scientists said.
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In other words, aliens might be eager to see what humans look like, just as we might be curious to see if they match the googly-eyed green aliens of science fiction.
The messages conclude with an invitation for the aliens to respond using a radio telescope of their own.
The report proposes using the FAST Observable Field, the world's largest radio telescope, located in Pingtang, Guizhouu, China, to deliver the message.
"The message is simple but significant," say the researchers, with the ultimate goal of "starting a dialogue with ETI, no matter how far into the future it may occur."
The project was created with support from the California Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Laboratory, under contract to NASA, and NASA's ROSES Exoplanet Research Program.
Science and SpaceMessageExtraterrestrial life