one7 - November 16 2018 marks 44 years since researchers sent humankind’s first interstellar radio message - an achievement Google is celebrating with a doodle.
Forty-four years ago today, a group of scientists gathered at the Arecibo Observatory amidst the tropical forests of Puerto Rico to attempt humankind’s first communication with 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) which could be arranged in a grid 73 rows by 23 columns—was aimed at a cluster of stars 25,000 light years away from earth.
one7 - Scientists sent the message via frequency modulated radio waves to a cluster of stars 25,000 light years away to demonstrate the power of the Arecibo radio telescope, which was the largest and most powerful in the world at the time.
This historic transmission was intended to demonstrate the capabilities of Arecibo’s recently upgraded radio telescope, whose 1000-foot-diameter dish made it the largest and most powerful in the world at the time.
"It was strictly a symbolic event, to show that we could do it," said Donald Campbell, Cornell University professor of astronomy, who was a research associate at the Arecibo Observatory at the time. Nevertheless some of those present were moved to tears.
The message itself was devised by a team of researchers from Cornell University led by Dr. Frank Drake—the astronomer and astrophysicist responsible for the Drake Equation, a means of estimating the number of planets hosting extraterrestrial life within the Milky Way galaxy. ‘‘What could we do that would be spectacular?’’ Drake recalled thinking. “We could send a message!’’
Written with the assistance of Carl Sagan, the message itself could be arranged in a rectangular grid of 0s and 1s to form a pictograph representing some fundamental facts of mathematics, human DNA, planet earth’s place in the solar system, and a picture of a human-like figure as well as an image of the telescope itself.
Since the Arecibo message has been sent, the message has travelled just 259 trillion miles - a fraction of its journey to its intended destination, which will take roughly 25,000 years to complete.
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