The Aricebo Answer

The Aricebo Answer

Ever heard of the aricebo answer? The Arecibo message was an interstellar radio message carrying basic information about humanity and Earth that was sent to the globular cluster Messier 13 in 1974. It was meant as a demonstration of human technological achievement, rather than a real attempt to enter into a conversation with extraterrestrials. The message consists of 1679 bits, arranged into 73 lines of 23 characters per line (these are both prime numbers, and may help the aliens decode the message). The "ones" and "zeroes" were transmitted by frequency shifting at the rate of 10 bits per second. The total broadcast was less than three minutes. A graphic showing the message is reproduced here. It consists, among other things, of the Arecibo telescope, our solar system, DNA, a stick figure of a human, and some of the biochemicals of earthly life. Although it's unlikely that this short inquiry will ever prompt a reply, the experiment was useful in getting us to think a bit about the difficulties of communicating across space, time, and a presumably wide culture gap.

"It was strictly a symbolic event, to show that we could do it," explains Donald Campbell, Cornell University professor of astronomy, who was a research associate at the Arecibo Observatory at the time. Arecibo Observatory is operated by the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, managed by Cornell University for the National Science Foundation.

The real purpose of the message was to call attention to the tremendous power of the radar transmitter newly installed at Arecibo and the ability of the telescope's 1,000-foot diameter dish antenna to project a powerful signal into space. But many of those present took the event seriously, according to Harold Craft, Cornell's vice president for services and facilities, who was then director of the Arecibo Observatory. "We translated the radio-frequency message into a warbling audio tone that was broadcast over speakers at the ceremony. When it started, much of the audience spontaneously got up and walked out of the tent and gazed up at the telescope."

While the audience that had gathered beside the huge Arecibo dish was impressed by the idea of sending messages to space, others were critical. Some actually suggested that sending such a message was dangerous, because it might attract the attention of hostile aliens. They probably needn't have worried. The chance that the message might actually be detected by some extraterrestrial intelligence is extremely small. It was sent only once, over a period of about three minutes, on a narrow beam directed toward a group of about 300,000 stars called the Great Cluster in Hercules, Messier 13. The globular cluster is 25,000 light-years away in our galaxy, the Milky Way. So far, moving at the speed of light, the message has traveled only one thousandth of the distance, or about 147 trillion miles. There are stars closer to our solar system than that, but none of them is in the path of the message.

Ironically, the globular cluster at which the signal was aimed won't be there when the message arrives. It will have moved well out of the way in the normal rotation of the galaxy. But "anyone" in the target area when the signal arrives could detect it with a radio telescope of similar size, and it would appear at 10 million times the intensity of the normal radio signals from our sun. From there, the message will continue on its course through outer space, ultimately, millions of years hence, reaching distant galaxies.

Since the transmitter was installed in 1974, Arecibo radar has been used for extensive explorations of the solar system, including detailed mapping of the surfaces of the moon and Venus. The radar was upgraded to even higher power in 1997. No other formal messages have been sent, but many of the radar signals have continued on out of our solar system and if detected would clearly be seen as created by intelligent beings, Campbell says. In addition, a message, engraved on copper plate, accompanied the Pioneer 10 spacecraft launched in March 1972 and now is about 7 billion miles from Earth.

Meanwhile, researchers constantly use the huge dish antenna to listen for signals from alien intelligence. One project, known as Phoenix, aims the telescope at specific stars; another, called Serendip, collects data on certain likely frequencies during all the telescope's other operations, and distributes the data to thousands of volunteers to process on personal computers. Project Phoenix is directed by the non-profit SETI Institute, based in Mountain View, Calif. Serendip is a project of the University of California at Berkeley.

The 1974 message was transmitted on a frequency of 2380 MHz and consisted of 1,679 binary bits representing ones and zeros, sent by shifting the frequency of the signal up and down over a range of about 10 Hz, a method similar to that used by computer modems to send binary code over a telephone line. If the ones are translated into graphics characters and the zeros into spaces, the message forms a symbolic picture 23 characters wide by 73 long.

The content of the message was developed by Frank Drake, then professor of astronomy at Cornell and now a professor in the Division of Natural Sciences at the University of California at Santa Cruz and president of the SETI Institute; Richard Isaacman, then a Cornell graduate student and now working at Integral Systems Inc. in Lanham, Md.; Linda May, another graduate student now professor of physical sciences at Wheelock College in Massachussetts, and James C.G. Walker, then a member of the Arecibo staff and now professor of physical sciences at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Others, especially the late Carl Sagan, who eventually became the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences at Cornell, contributed to the project.

25 Years Later - Encounter 2001

25 years later, the first detailed radio message to the stars is being transmitted on Monday. It asks any aliens who receive it to get in touch. It was part of a commercial project called Encounter 2001 based in Houston, US. The company offered the public the chance to tag their own messages on the end for $15. Chan Tysor of Encounter 2001 says: "This is a statement, sending something of yourself away from the Earth to travel in space forever.

The stars the messages are aimed at are 51 to 71 light years away. Radio waves travel at the speed of light, meaning that it will be at least 102 years before any reply is received. That does not include any thinking time for any alien trying to decipher the message.

But scientists involved in listening for intelligent signals from outer space are sceptical. Specialists in Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) say sending a message out into space is almost certainly a fruitless exercise.

Dr Frank Stootman, of Seti Australia, says that it is not a message to aliens, but to us. He adds that a reply is very unlikely and certainly not within our lifetime.

The Message

The main message is based on science, logic and mathematics. Dr Yvan Dutil, a scientist working for the Canadian Government, helped to design it. He points out that the only other signal deliberately sent into space, beamed out in 1974, was aimed at stars unlikely to have planets. Because the new signal is aimed at a handful of stars like our Sun, in a region of the sky called the Summer Triangle, he says that "for practical purposes, this will be our first detailed interstellar transmission." It is being transmitted on Monday by the Evpatoria radio telescope in the Ukraine.

The message consists of a series of pages repeated three times over a period of three hours. The signal is 100,000 times stronger than a TV broadcast.

Don't listen, talk

The message sent in 1974 was transmitted from the Arecibo radio telescope. It was a brief three-minute message towards the distant M13 stellar cluster. It consisted of 1,679 pulses. When arranged into a matrix, they became an image showing atoms, molecules, our Solar System and a representation of a human. But the new cosmic message is much longer - 400,000 bits. Starting with basic symbols, it uses logic to describe numbers and geometry. It then goes on to introduce concepts such as atoms, planets and even DNA. "If any aliens ever intercept this message, they will have mastered science. Therefore, much of the first part of the message, the part that deals with numbers and atoms, will be familiar to them", says Dr Dutil. "They can then go on and deduce a few things about humans such as where we live, how big we are and how many there are of us."

Universal peace

As well as the encrypted message, there will be a series of greetings written by the general public. According to Chan Tysor, the greetings include peoples' hopes for a more peaceful future for mankind and other races in space. One person says that we have made a mess of our planet and asks aliens to put off a visit for another 100,000 years. Mr Tysor says the signal is a kind of monument. "It is a kind of immortality knowing that something you wrote is beaming its way out of the solar system into the galaxy."

Listening in

In a separate project, Seti experts who listen for unsolicited messages have been pleased by the response to their release of free SETI@home software. This screensaver program allows computers to analyse radio signals for possible signs of ET. Just a week after its launch, nearly 300,000 computers have contributed 1100 years of computer time to the search for extraterrestrial life.

 

A New Message 50 Years Later

 

Researchers Made a New Message for Extraterrestrials

An updated communication could be beamed out for space alien listeners in hopes of making first contact. Upon discovering the existence of intelligent life beyond Earth, the first question we are most likely to ask is “How can we communicate?” As we approach the 50th anniversary of the 1974 Arecibo message—humanity’s first attempt to send out a missive capable of being understood by extraterrestrial intelligence—the question feels more urgent than ever. Advances in remote sensing technologies have revealed that the vast majority of stars in our galaxy host planets and that many of these exoplanets appear capable of hosting liquid water on their surface—a prerequisite for life as we know it. The odds that at least one of these billions of planets has produced intelligent life seem favorable enough to spend some time figuring out how to say “hello.”

 

In early March an international team of researchers led by Jonathan Jiang of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory posted a paper on the preprint server arXiv.org that detailed a new design for a message intended for extraterrestrial recipients. The 13-page epistle, referred to as the “Beacon in the Galaxy,” is meant to be a basic introduction to mathematics, chemistry and biology that draws heavily on the design of the Arecibo message and other past attempts at contacting extraterrestrials. The researchers included a detailed plan for the best time of year to broadcast the message and proposed a dense ring of stars near the center of our galaxy as a promising destination. Importantly, the transmission also features a freshly designed return address that will help any alien listeners pinpoint our location in the galaxy so they can—hopefully—kick off an interstellar conversation.

 

“The motivation for the design was to deliver the maximum amount of information about our society and the human species in the minimal amount of message,” Jiang says. “With improvements in digital technology, we can do much better than the [Arecibo message] in 1974.”

 

The Basics

 

Every interstellar message must address two fundamental questions: what to say and how to say it. Nearly all the messages that humans have broadcast into space so far start by establishing common ground with a basic lesson in science and mathematics, two topics that are presumably familiar to both ourselves and extraterrestrials. If a civilization beyond our planet is capable of building a radio telescope to receive our message, it probably knows a thing or two about physics. A far messier question is how to encode these concepts into the communiqué. Human languages are out of the question for obvious reasons, but so are our numeral systems. Though the concept of numbers is nearly universal, the way we depict them as numerals is entirely arbitrary. This is why many attempts, including “Beacon in the Galaxy,” opt to design their letter as a bitmap, a way to use binary code to create a pixelated image.

 

The bitmap design philosophy for interstellar communication stretches back to the Arecibo message. It is a logical approach—the on/off, present/absent nature of a binary seems like it would be recognized by any intelligent species. But the strategy is not without its shortcomings. When pioneering search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) scientist Frank Drake designed a prototype of the Arecibo message, he sent the binary message by post to some colleagues, including several Nobel laureates. None of them were able to understand its contents, and only one figured out that the binary was meant to be a bitmap. If some of the smartest humans struggle to understand this form of encoding a message, it seems unlikely that an extraterrestrial would fare any better. Furthermore, it is not even clear that space aliens will be able to see the images contained within  the message if they do receive it.

 

“One of the key ideas is that, because vision has evolved independently many times on Earth, that means aliens will have it, too,” says Douglas Vakoch, president of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) International, a nonprofit devoted to researching how to communicate with other life-forms. “But that’s a big ‘if,’ and even if they can see, there is so much culture embedded in the way we represent objects. Does that mean we should rule out pictures? Absolutely not. It means we should not naively assume that our representations are going to be intelligible.”

 

In 2017 Vakoch and his colleagues sent the first interstellar message transmitting scientific information since2003 to a nearby star. It, too, was coded in binary, but it eschewed bitmaps for a message design that explored the concepts of time and radio waves by referring back to the radio wave carrying the message. Jiang and his colleagues chose another path. They based much of their design on the 2003 Cosmic Call broadcast from the Yevpatoriaradio telescope in the region of Crimea. This message featured a custom bitmap “alphabet” created by physicists Yvan Dutil and Stéphane Dumas as a protoalien language that was designed to be robust against transmission errors.

 

After an initial transmission of a prime number to mark the message as artificial, Jiang’s message uses the same alien alphabet to introduce our base-10 numeral system and basic mathematics. With this foundation in place, the message uses the spin-flip transition of a hydrogen atom to explain the idea of time and mark when the transmission was sent from Earth, introduce common elements from the periodic table, and reveal the structure and chemistry of DNA. The final pages are probably the most interesting to extraterrestrials but also the least likely to be understood because they assume that the recipient represents objects in the same way that humans do. These pages feature a sketch of a male and female human, a map of Earth’s surface, a diagram of our solar system, the radio frequency that the extraterrestrials should use to respond to the message and the coordinates of our solar system in the galaxy referenced to the location of globular clusters—stable and tightly packed groups of thousands of stars that would likely be familiar to an extraterrestrial anywhere in the galaxy.

 

“We know the location of more than 50 globularclusters,” Jiang says. “If there’s an advanced civilization, we bet that, if they know astrophysics, they know the globular cluster locations as well, so we can use this as a coordinate to pinpoint the location of our solar system.”

 

To Send Or Not?

 

Jiang and his colleagues propose sending their message from either the Allen Telescope Array in northern California or the Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) in China. Since the recent destruction of the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, these two radio telescopes are the only ones in the world that are actively courting SETI researchers. At the moment, though, both telescopes are only capable of listening to the cosmos, not talking to it. Jiang acknowledges that outfitting either telescope with the equipment required to transmit the message will not be trivial. But doing so is possible, and he says he and his co-authors are discussing ways to work with researchers at FAST to make it happen.*

 

If Jiang and his colleagues get a chance to transmit their message, they calculated that it would be best to do so sometime in March or October, when Earth is at a 90-degree angle between the sun and its target at the center of the Milky Way. This would maximize the chance that the missive would not get lost in the background noise of our host star. But a far deeper question is whether we should be sending a message at all.

 

Messaging extraterrestrials has always occupied a controversial position in the broader SETI community, which is mostly focused on listening for alien transmissions rather than sending out our own. To detractors of “active SETI,” the practice is a waste of time at best and an existentially dangerous gamble at worst. There are billions of targets to choose from, and the odds that we send a message to the right planet at the right time are dismally low. Plus, we have no idea who may be listening. What if we give our address to an alien species that lives on a diet of bipedal hominins?

 

“I don’t live in fear of an invading horde, but other people do. And just because I don’t share their fear doesn’t make their concerns irrelevant,” says Sheri Wells-Jensen, an associate professor of English at Bowling Green State University and an expert on the linguistic and cultural issues associated with interstellar message design. “Just because it would be difficult to achieve global consensus on what to send or whether we should send doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. It is our responsibility to struggle with this and include as many people as possible.”

 

Despite the pitfalls, many insist that the potential rewards of active SETI far outweigh the risks. First contact would be one of the most momentous occasions in the history of our species, the argument goes, and if we just wait around for someone to call us, it may never happen. As for the risk of annihilation by a malevolent space alien: We blew our cover long ago. Any extraterrestrial capable of traveling to Earth would be more than capable of detecting evidence of life in the chemical signatures of our atmosphere or the electromagnetic radiation that has been leaking from our radios, televisions and radar systems for the past century. “This is an invitation to all people on Earth to participate in a discussion about sending out this message,” Jiang says. “We hope, by publishing this paper, we can encourage people to think about this.”

 

The Hoax - Aricebo Response

 

In 2001, though, anonymous crop circle enthusiasts created their own response to the Arecibo message. They impressed it into a field next to another radio telescope, in Hampshire in the United Kingdom. The new message is very similar to the Arecibo message, but the hoaxers added a few small changes. For starters, the DNA is a different shape forming a triple helix, and the references to carbon (as in carbon-based lifeforms) were replaced with silicon. The solar system map is completely different and implies three habited planets. The hoaxers switched the picture of the telescope for an abstract squiggle: the same squiggle appeared in a different crop circle one year earlier. But the best and most arresting change was in the human figure. The Arecibo reply instead shows an alien – bulging head, giant eyes, and all.

 

The hoaxers were anonymous. No one knows who they are or where they came from. If this was the case, why bother posting information that it was hoaxed if you can’t prove who did it? Could this be a government coverup? What would be the motive to claim is a hoax? From all of the articles I have read about the supposed hoaxers, nothing details where it came from or who was involved. Meaning we have no idea who called it in or when. This kind of information is important in an investigation don’t you think?

 

There are a few reasons why people believe the Arecibo Reply was a hoax:

 

1. The Timing: The crop circle appeared shortly after the 30th anniversary of the original Arecibo message,suggesting a deliberate attempt to capitalize on the event.
2. The Complexity: The design of the crop circle was intricate and detailed, suggesting a level of planning and coordination that would be difficult for a spontaneous act.
3. Previous Hoaxes: Crop circles are a common phenomenon, and many have been proven to be hoaxes. The Arecibo Reply's appearance in a location associated with astronomical research made it a prime target for such a prank.
4. Lack of Evidence: Despite numerous investigations, there has been no concrete evidence to support the claim that the Arecibo Reply was created by extraterrestrial beings or any other supernatural force.

 

The "Arecibo answer" is a crop circle (well, crop rectangle, to be accurate) that is purported to be a response to the "Arecibo message", a piece of coded information about Earth and humanity which was first beamed into space in 1974.[1] It appeared in 2001 near the Chilbolton radio telescope in Hampshire, UK. Despite the fact crop circles are known to be hoaxes, people still believe that this is key evidence of extraterrestrial presence on Earth.[2] At the time of this hoax, the usual suspect came out of the woodworks to claim that this is "undeniable proof!!!!" that aliens have contacted us.[3][4] Amidst all this madness, SETI had to actually come out and spell it out that the obvious hoax is indeed an obvious hoax.[5]

 

The crop circle is a near replica of the Arecibo message, which contained various pieces of information such as the numbers of chemical elements, the composition of DNA, the position of Earth in the Solar System, and a depiction of a human being. The "answer" itself doesn't expand much upon this and still forms the same 23 x 73 grid (because these numbers are primes) and most of the chemical data remains the same. The changes to the message to create the response are straight from existing alien folklore and science fiction. In the section detailing important chemical elements, the main focus is altered from carbon to silicon, and the diagram of DNA is re-scribbled slightly. At the bottom, the pictogram of a human is replaced with a shorter figure with a large, bulbous head. This is a clear reference to the "grey" type of alien, and as a depiction could only be something that a human came up with.

 

The likelihood of the Arecibo message ever being picked up is very, very low. It was aimed at globular star cluster M13, which is 25,000 light years away. In fact, it's so far away that in 25,000 years when it finally reaches its destination, its destination will have, in fact, moved! The message was only intended as a demonstration of the transmission technology, not as a serious attempt to make contact.

 

The message does also pass close enough to a few nearby stars to have been potentially "received" in their vicinity. But why wouldn't the recipients simply send back a message via radio, instead of coming here and messing up some poor farmer's crops at night and then sneaking away?

 

The hoax "Arecibo answer" or "reply" was a crop circle that was found in a field in the UK in 2001. Pressed into a field in Hampshire, it seemed to mirror the look of the original Arecibo message, which gave a host of information about life on Earth that the originators hoped would be decodable to people anywhere in the universe.

 

Where the original Arecibo message had shown blocks of information including depictions of important chemicals like carbon, an illustration of DNA and a picture of a human being. The hoax reply was probably too perfect: carbon was swapped for silicon, the DNA was altered and the human being was replaced with a big-headed alien of the kind seen in science fiction.

 

It was of course a hoax: among other questions, sceptics wondered why aliens wouldn't simply have sent a radio message, as we did, rather than dropping down to Earth to press a picture of themselves into crops and then failing to actually alert anyone. But it was a demonstration of the way the original Arecibo message and the search for alien life that it grew out of continues to occupy the minds of people around the world.

 

Scientists don't ever expect to actually receive a reply to the Arecibo message: it was powerful but specific, pointed at a galaxy cluster that will actually have moved out of the way by the time it travels the 20,000 light years to its destination. It was probably most useful as a demonstration of the technology and a thought experiment that led people to think about what such a message might actually need to say.

 

Similar efforts have been launched that could have more positive results, however. A new initiative called Breakthrough Message – part of a broader group supported by a Russian billionaire and Stephen Hawking, which aims to find life elsewhere in the universe – has invited people to consider how best to write and send a message out into space, though has cautioned that for the moment it will not send out those messages.

 

But some fear that a response wouldn't come in the form of a message at all. Instead, it would be something altogether more dangerous – and that's why they advise that we shouldn't send further signals like the Arecibo message, for fear that they would only put us in peril.

 

Stephen Hawking, for instance, famously said that we should be wary of sending out messages into the universe for fear that they could be answered by someone looking to wipe us out – or, perhaps worse, someone who might wipe us out purely by accident. "‘If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans," he said in a 2010 documentary.

 

And such criticism was even in place when the Arecibo message was first sent. Just days after the dispatch was shot into space, the Royal Astronomer of England, Martin Ryle, launched an intense blast of criticism at the idea, arguing that it might only alert aliens who are "malevolent or hungry", and asking the International Astronomical Union to ban any future messages.

 

There used to be tons of articles and websites about the Aricebo Reply. 

 

Reported and debunked as a hoax, yet from my research of mixing iron into clay, the return of the nephilim, terraforming for acceptance of heavy metals and silica, could this reply be a direct message to humanity as to the intentions of what the powers that be plan are planning and doing? I believe so. I personally don’t think real ET’s would be so dumb to come here now. Especially when we have the ability to chase them with guns. We are a war civilization and it’s best to not interfere in our evolvement. Yet the rulers of earth want you to believe that since we launched the atomic bomb, that we ripped the fabric of space and time for other timelines and parallel universes and they are coming here to slap us on the wrist, teach us to fly to planet zaltar and be good humans. I call bullshit. A plausible explanation of ET’s are our own human species is/are creating all of this with fallen angels to deceive mankind for better control. What better way to consolidate the world into zones like the hunger games. Is there life on other planets? Why not? Is the earth flat? Most likely, no. Will intelligent human beings come here from the future to genetically retrieve their genes back from the mistake they made right now with the mRNA shot that turned our genes into a triple helix just like the Placebo answer? Dude … the answer is staring you in the face.

 

This is all planned and designed to control mankind with a deception. We are told by whistleblowers that ET’s are changing our planet to make way for their arrival. Why now? Why not 200 years ago when we were pulling wagons by horse? Why give us technology to compete? Because they are kind? Again, I call bullshit. To me, it’s just more proof the spiritual world is clashing with the physical where Genesis 6 and the book of Enoch proves happened right before Noah’s flood. And why is Tartaria being pitched to us now? The mud flood? The idea that a hundred years or so ago we had a flood that wiped out humanity and we rebuilt? Most likely it is to get your focus off the days of Noah. So you don’t put the clues together that the devil is in the details. Pun intended. And we as a dumbed down society through education and fluoride we have been manipulated into the idea of aliens when the fact is the fallen angels are returning once again for the final battle of Armageddon that the book of revelation tells us. 

 

ET’s are nothing more than human-animal hybrids perfected by Russia after world war 2 when they took the German scientists during operation paperclip. Germany was building a new race of beings that were considered perfect. The Nordic beautiful looking beings that can pass as alien using CRISPR technology by adding animal characteristics to human form. Think about it. Chameleons can change their skin tone, octopuses can blend into a rock, snake’s have venom and why would it be so hard to believe we spliced reptilian dna into mankind? If we perfected antigravity in the 50’s, why not perfect dna animal splicing by now? Cloning is real isn’t it? Whistleblowers have said there are deep underground military bases all over the world that connect to each other through magnetic speed railway technology. Black budgets and 33 trillion dollars of America’s debt paid for it. Departmentalization and the ability to keep secrets for over 20 years is what happened. We took the psychics and spliced their dna with reptiles so the finished product can read minds. This all has been happening right under your house. Are reptilians real? I believe so. Not because they are a species that want to control mankind as they have done for hundreds of thousands years in an intergalactic space war. That is the great lie. They are hybrids of human and animal created to fool the masses into giving up their freedom for safety from them. The Breakspears are going after the Orsinis and will use this as the excuse. Claiming this reptile race is an old foe, however, they are just an experiment of man’s imagination for keeping control over humanity. And while the news scare you with fake aliens, they will turn us into a new hybrid to prepare the fallen angels to inhabit mankind through possession and rule the world once again as they did before during the days of Noah.

 

sources

 

Gemini AI

 

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1999/11/25th-anniversary-first-attempt-phone-et-0

 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/researchers-made-a-new-message-for-extraterrestrials/

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/arecibo-message-decoded-meaning-google-doodle-reply-audio-response-explained-a8636856.html

 

https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2023/11/the-arecibo-reply-how-we-know-aliens-arent-calling-us-through-crop-circles/