It is an interstellar message that was beamed into space in 1974 with the hope of making contact with extra-terrestrial life. It was transmitted on November 16, 1974 from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico to the globular start cluster M13 about 25,000 light years away. The event marked the remodeling of what was then the world’s largest single-aperture telescope. The cluster M13 was chosen because it was at the right place at the right time.
The Arecibo message was the most powerful broadcast ever beamed deer space at the time. It contained 1679 binary digits, arranged in 73 lines of 23 characters per line. It was transmitted at a frequency of 2,380 MHz. the ‘phone call’ to the universe was less than three minutes long.
The message was created by Frank Drake, (an American astronomer and astrophysicist) with the help of Carl Sagan, (American astronomer-author) and the observatory staff. The message had seven components:
- The numbers one to ten
- The atomic numbers of the elements which make up our DNA – hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorous
- The formulas for the sugars and bases in the nucleotides of DNA
- The number of nucleotides in DNA and a graphic of the double helix structure of DNA
- The human figure along with its average height and the population of Earth
- The solar system
- The Arecibo Observatory and the diameter of the transmitting antenna dish.
It will take nearly 25,000 years for the message to reach its intended destination and an additional 25,000 years for any reply. The message was more a display of the achievement of human technology than an expectation of contact with aliens.
To mark the event’s 45th anniversary in November 2019, the Arecibo Observatory has asked young people around the world to devise an updated version of the message.
Picture Credit : Google