Pioneer 10: Greetings from Earth

space.com ^ | 9/18/12 | Elizabeth Howell

[DallasBiff]

Thanks to Pioneer 10's pictures, the planet Jupiter and its moons, which were formerly only small circles in a telescope, became large, vibrant worlds in the eyes of scientists. For decades after those images beamed back to Earth, Pioneer 10 kept going. It sent valuable scientific data about the sun and cosmic rays before its signal became too faint for Earthlings to hear.

Pioneer 10 also carries a plaque with a message to any intelligent life it might encounter on its journey. The Pioneer plaque includes diagrams of Earth's location and drawings of a man and a woman

[DallasBiff]

This article is nearly 10 years old. What if we get greetings from ET's tomorrow, due to the Carl Sagan inspired pioneer plaque, with anatomically correct depictions of a male and female.

The ET's would say, we were inspired to make contact due to that plaque, and the liberal nuts would say back, "How dare you, that plaque is from a horrible time, when 99% of Earthling's believed in just two genders."

[MinorityRepublican]

I bet Carl Sagan would be woke if he was alive today.

[DannyTN]

[Billthedrill]

"Pathetic earthlings. Hurling your bodies out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the universe, anything at all, you would've hidden from it in terror."

I figure if we can have a guy from Kenya become president we could have a guy from Mongo. Fair's fair.

[Fungi]

Had a friend who worked on this. His next door neighbor also did for many years but neither one knew until they both retired. That was how tight security was.

[DannyTN]

He might be better than the Kenyan.

I just want to build the sensuality ray.

Probably need a signed contract to be able to use it on someone.

[Freedom4US]

Two sexes. Male and Female.

“Gender” actually refers to words, not people.

[july4thfreedomfoundation]

Stephen Hawkings thought it was a bad idea to let aliens know Earth’s location, in case they were hostile.

We sure as hell don’t need “Independence Day” to happen for real.

[Telepathic Intruder]

To all whom it may concern:
Here is a simple diagram of how to find us, and what we look like in case you want to enslave or eat us, or just take our planet. It's a nice one, we think, with plenty of natural resources.

[Dundee]

The location was based on Earth’s relative position in relation to the handful of then known pulsars. Fast forward to today and we now know that just about every neutron star starts out as a pulsar (to somebody, not just Earth) so there are millions of pulsars in our galaxy alone.

Scientists have admitted that the directions on the probes probably wouldn’t help any alien that might discover the probe.

[BradyLS]

Pluto will always be a planet according to that plaque.

[21twelve]

“Scientists have admitted that the directions on the probes probably wouldn’t help any alien that might discover the probe.”

I understand the humans, the spaceship, sun and planets.

The symbols by the planets I have no idea, nor the two circles at the top.

[naturalman1975]

The symbols by the planets give their relative distance from the sun as binary values.

the two circles represent two different states of a hydrogen atom that changes every 0.7 nanoseconds. Light travels 21 centimetres in 0.7 nanoseconds, so the unit I between the two circles can be used to describe either that time or that distance, and is used as a binary digit on other parts of the plaque to give measurements in both time and space - those long lines radiating from a single point for example, use the 0.7 nanosecond time period in binary to give the period of the pulsars. And using the 21 centimetre distance and binary digits to the right of the woman, her height is given as 168 centimetres (5’6”).

(I had to teach a lesson on this recently).

[Telepathic Intruder]

That’s right. It says that we are horrible liars, because they were clearly see when they get here that Pluto is not a planet. They’ll probably vaporize us just for that.

[21twelve]

“...the two circles represent two different states of a hydrogen atom that changes every 0.7 nanoseconds. Light travels 21 centimetres in 0.7 nanoseconds...”

Very interesting - thanks for the explanation!

(Makes converting over to metric seem simple!)

[BradyLS]

Pluto is planet enough for me. It can be in the club as an honoree.

[knarf]

. . . been sayin' that for years . . .

Gender is a grammatical construct.

[CTyank]

“It’s a cookbook!”

[fso301]

What if we get greetings from ET's tomorrow, due to the Carl Sagan inspired pioneer plaque,

Don't worry. In astronomical terms, neither Pioneer or Voyager have left the driveway yet.

[skepsel]

Aliens might see the Pioneer 10 placque as an invitation to an inter-species swingers club, an early form of “sext-ing”.

Could explain all the reported “abductions” and “probings”....