Nov. 16, 1974, was a time like any other in our troubled world. The Vietnam War was raging. ABBA made its first appearance in Europe. After Richard Nixon resigned in August, the Republicans lost four Senate chairs and 45 House tickets.
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The circular swarm Messier 13 served as the first message ever sent by humans, according to science nerds. The Arecibo radio telescope, which was the largest lens at the time, broadcast a digital information of zeros and people that, if you arrange its digits grid-wise, will transform into a two-dimensional picture of what kind of thing we are and where we are in the solar system.
Now is 50th anniversary of Arecibo Message, the Earth’s First Interstellar Transmission. #arecibomessage photograph. twitter.com/Z6KPw9RXxS— takwah ( @takwah ) November 16, 2024
This was our first true “active SETI” ( Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence ) attempt, which was a deliberate attempt to announce our presence rather than a passive SETI ( search for signs of life ) attempt. The swarm is 25, 000 gentle times from Earth.
According to Rebecca Charbonneau, a scientific scholar at the American Institute of Physics,” I think of the Arecibo information in this grand history of attempts to communicate with ET or send things into space that are inherently information, at least in part, to Earth as well.”
Given the message’s physical quality, ET would need the capacity to see, which was what made the “message” to be fundamentally flawed.  ,
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According to Charbonneau,” Mortal beings are extremely visual creatures, and we need something visually appealing and beautiful to channel feelings of spirituality and wonder.” And in some ways,” I think the Arecibo communication is an image in that old tradition—a graphic depiction of something that makes us feel small in a kind of broad and sublime way.”
Hope was expressed in the communication in troubled days as well. However, it gradually revealed our dream’s folly and weakness. Arecibo was decommissioned in 2020 and fell into disrepair.
Anyone who considers this subject or is aware of the history will be sucked into those images, according to David Grinspoon, senior scholar at NASA for science technique. The inspiration is transcendent because it was not done for political or personal gain, and the gesture was quite upbeat. It was like,’ Hey, humans on Earth, we can do this.'”
Despite the gesture’s optimism, that are becoming more and more scientists who believe that participating in SETI is foolish. Among them was the late Stephen Hawking, who said,” If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which did n’t turn out well for the Native Americans”. Many in the SETI society think it was foolish to reach out like we did with the Arecibo information despite the slim chance that Hawking is best.
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Seth Shostak, a top scientist at the SETI Institute in California, disagrees with Hawking’s finish. ” This is an unnecessary anxiety”, Shostak says. There is no reason to worry about them right then if their concern for our planet is because they value what our planet has to offer. They have options for finding rocky moons if they’re interested in tools, independent of whether or not we broadcast. A billion years ago, they might include discovered us.
Hawking would likely respond that contact with an alien civilization may result in more profit than the possibility that Shostak’s way of thinking was mistaken.
It’s all redundant, of training. Despite having some interesting events in SETI story, the Search for ET has been ongoing for 50 decades, no one has uttered a single sigh from anyone who might be nearby.