Aliens Respond to Us

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• published: 15 Jan 2015
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After 27 years, we may have actually made contact with aliens. In 1974, the Arecibo Radio Telescope received a major technological overhaul resulting in a massive boost in transmission power. To celebrate the upgrade, Doctors Frank Drake and Carl Sagan created an instellar greeting message, and translated it into a universally understandable binary code template capable of being transmitted to distant galaxies. The message is easily rendered into an infographic of humanity. It starts with a basic binary count from 1 to 10, which serves as a built in decryption key to translate the message into a graphic form. It then lists the atomic numbers for the most basic chemical elements that make up DNA, and describes the building blocks of DNA by giving the specific nucleotide formulas and showing the double helix DNA structure of every living thing on Earth. A measuring bar beside a human form indicates the average height of humanity to be about five foot nine, and the Earth's population to be approximately 4 billion. It then shows Earth's position as the third planet in our Solar System, with a diagram of the Arecibo Radio Telescope message transmitter, and it's size. Twenty seven years later, we received a reply. Scientists at the Chilbolton Radio Observatory showed up to work as usual one morning in 2001, to discover the most detailed crop formation ever had appeared overnight in the wheat field next door. Overnight surveillance cameras didn't see a thing. In addition to an amazing portrait of a human face, gently folded into the vegetation without breaking any stalks, there was also a familiar greeting template... describing someone else! The message starts with the binary code decryption key, just as ours did, but the DNA section gets very interesting! They actually correct our list of basic DNA elements by adding Silicon, which Carl Sagan didn't realize at the time but we've discovered since then, and they show a very unusal triple helix structure. The humanoid image is definitely the freakiest part! The measuring bar indictes the average height of the alien species to be just 3'4”, and the diagram shows they have a much larger head and shorter legs than we do, and about triple the population with over 12 billion. Their star system map is confusing for the similarities to ours. It looks just like the Solar System but Pluto is missing (which we no longer consider a planet), with habitations on Earth, Mars, and the moons of Jupiter, which all just happen to be likely targets for human colonization. Their illustrated method of message transmission is not clearly understood, but it's clear by the measurements provided that it's at least twice as powerful as the Arecibo.