Carl Sagan

Whats with Carl Sagan’s message that was beamed into space in 1974?

Could the actual binary Arecibo message that was beamed into space in 1974 by Carl Sagan be decoded as a picture? If not, how would the entity know to duplicate their message as a picture instead of just a binary code?

It’s still out there. It will take approximately 25,000 years for it to arrive at the destination that they were aiming for. If “they” are going to hear it, then they’d better have their ears (or, whatever they use) to their radios, because the entire broadcast was less than three minutes long.

Assuming that “they” actually do receive the entire message, and assuming that they record it, then they’ll have the rest of eternity to figure out what it means. That might not be enough time.

Maybe they will figure out that it’s a string of 1679 bits. Maybe one of them will notice that 1679 has exactly two prime factors. Maybe they, like us, are accustomed to recording their ideas on two-dimensional pieces of paper, and maybe they will try to see what it looks like if they plot the bits in a 73×23 grid.

There’s a lot of different ways you could fill a 73×23 grid with 1679 bits. Maybe it will occur to them to fill the grid row-by-row or column by column. Maybe the “obvious” way (according to their culture) will be something different (maybe a spiral.) Some of the pictures that they get may look “random”, and some of them might look like “something.” Again, much will depend on their culture.

Maybe they will eventually decide that our interpretation is the most likely. Maybe their “experts” will be divided over which pattern is the right pattern. Probably their biggest clue will be the crude diagram of a parabolic dish antenna that appears in the image. Maybe they will recognize that, or maybe it will have been so many aeons since they used that particular technology that nobody even remembers what they looked like.

If they ever pick the right way to fill the bits into the array, then they will have to figure out what all of the different crude blobby forms mean. That’s the part that could take forever.

Assuming they even have their radios on, and their recorders running when the message flashes past.

Carl Sagan – ‘A Glorious Dawn’ ft Stephen Hawking (Symphony of Science)