The question of whether we are alone in the Universe has haunted scientists for many years. At the beginning of the 19th century, astronomer Joseph Johann von
Another scientist, German Karl Friedrich Gauss, at the beginningIn the 1820s, he voiced an interesting proposal: to transmit a signal to aliens by reflecting the sun's rays with a mirror. He did not stop there and his other idea was even more exotic. He proposed cutting down a large triangular section of the forest in Siberia and sowing it with wheat. Color contrast (yellow grass against a green forest) could attract the attention of creatures from space. At the same time, the correct shape of the triangle would make it clear to the aliens that intelligent beings live on Earth.
All these ideas did not materialize. But people did not stop trying to contact an extraterrestrial civilization. What messages have we already sent to the aliens and what is encrypted in them?
Mir, Lenin, USSR
In 1962, Soviet scientists sent to Venusradio transmitter and greeted the planet using Morse code. The antenna of the Evpatoria Center for Long-Range Space Communications transmitted three words into space: “Peace”, “Lenin”, “USSR”. This was the first message into space.
Author: Rumlin — Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
According to a 2018 article published inInternational Journal of Astrobiology, scientists consider the message to be largely symbolic. First of all, it was a test launch of a completely new planetary radar - a technology that sends radio waves into space. Its main purpose is to observe and map objects in the solar system. It was in Evpatoria that the Mission Control Center (MCC) worked. The spacecraft were launched from Plesetsk and Baikonur, but until the end of the 70s they were all controlled from Evpatoria.
Arecibo message
The next attempt to contact aliens wasmuch more ambitious. In 1974, a group of scientists led by famous astronomers Frank Drake and Carl Sagan managed to send a radio message from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico towards the object Messier 13. This cluster of stars is located in the constellation Hercules at a distance of about 25 thousand light years from Earth . The image, sent in binary code, shows the structure of DNA with a double helix, a model of a carbon atom and a diagram of a telescope. There are also images of naked people - one man and one woman.
This is one of the most famous messages for others.civilizations, sometimes it is called "a shot in the dark". According to the astronomy department of Cornell University, humanity will be able to know whether the message has successfully reached Messier 13 only after 50 thousand years, when a possible civilization sends a response to the message and it reaches Earth. By the way, the intensity of the signal that was sent from Arecibo is 10 million times higher than the intensity of radio signals from our Sun.
Hercules Cluster - Messier 13
Radio signals were even used for advertising incosmic scale. For example, in 2008, Doritos - an American brand of flavored tortilla chips - sent a message advertising the brand to the planetary system in the constellation Ursa Major. It is located at a distance of about 42 light-years from Earth, which means that possible aliens will receive a message only after 30 years. And in 2010, a message written in Klingon. It was invented specifically for the Star Trek universe. The message contains an invitation for real aliens to visit the Klingon Opera in the Netherlands. The piece of music was named "u", which means "Universe" in Russian. The production was shown at the Zeebelt Theater in The Hague. Alas, no aliens.
"Golden Record"
Trying to contact alienshumanity relied on more than just radio signals. In 1977, engineers launched spacecraft that contained artifacts from Earth. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were originally built to explore the limits of the solar system and interstellar space.
Each of them has a "Golden Record", on it- music, sounds of the environment from the Earth and 116 images of our planet and the solar system. The disc contains 27 different works by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Chuck Berry, even playing the pipe from the Solomon Islands and ritual singing from New Guinea.
How realistic is it to communicate with aliens?
The likelihood that any of these attemptswill reach alien civilizations, is small. In addition to the fact that the signal may simply not reach the aliens due to the huge distances in space, there is another problem. The life that humanity turns to must not only be intelligent, but also have enough knowledge of mathematics and science to interpret our messages. Finally, messages sent by humans suggest that these aliens experience the universe the same way we do: hearing and seeing. But this does not mean that all these messages are meaningless. The main thing is to keep trying, scientists say.
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