We Made Contact .... ?

It all started in 1974, before SETI (The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) was even formed (1984), but at the beginning of the Arecibo project. At this time, upgrading the Arecibo station in the US Territory of Puerto Rico was done with the help of Frank Drake and Carl Sagan.

The Arecibo radio telescope dish to the left is the largest in the world. The first pulsar in a binary system was discovered in 1974 using Arecibo, leading to important confirmation of Einstein's theory of general relativity and a Nobel Prize for astronomers Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor in 1993.

The most interesting experiment in 1974 with Arecibo however was it's 3 Terawatt narrowband transmission of a "human template" in the direction of the M13 globular star cluster which consists of 300,000 stars and is in the constellation of Hercules.

The human template transmission was made originally by Frank Drake and with great cooperation from Carl Sagan, whos book, later translated into the movie "Contact" was loosely based. The name of Carl Sagan to this date reminds many of "Contact" and it only seems fitting he was part of the November 16th, 1974 human template transmission from Arecibo. The journey of the human template message from Arecibo would take 22,800 light years to reach Messier 13. It took a tiny fraction of that to receive a reply however.

The human template, originally sent in 1974 by Arecibo is shown to the right. With the help of Richard C. Hoagland, in 1971 templates were added to United States spacecraft, but the human template transmission in 1974 was sent at the speed of light and in binary form. The blank space in the image represents a binary 0 and the solid blocks represent binary 1's.

The Arecibo message included, among other things, the binary equivalant of the numbers 1-10 showing a "base of 10" identifing our math system and a way to decipher the message. Below these numbers identified the most common atomic numbers in life that we knew at that time. We transmitted our atomic numbers for Hydrogen, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen and Phosphorus. We didn't stop there and added the molecular formulas for our human DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid).

In 1974, we knew the estimated number of nucleotides in our DNA, and we transmitted those as well and you can also see our "Double Helix" DNA Strand. We also sent, as the human race, our average height, and a rough proportional representation of our bodies. The population of our planet earth, which in 1974 was estimated as 4.29 Billion Humans was also transmitted. For the source of the transmission, planet Earth, Arecibo, we sent our solar system identifing the third planet from the Sun - Earth - just under our feet. Also with the source was the Arecibo Telescope, with it's diameter.

Expecting the transmission to take 22,800 Light Years might have been an exageration when, in reality it may reach life much earlier. In fact, the transmission has now traveled nearly 27 light years from Earth (156 trillion + miles) - towards M13, and has passed the distance of the closest star from our Sun which is 4.3 light years away. It takes only approximately 1 minute to reach Mars travelling at light speed for perspective, or 1.23 seconds to reach the moon.

Einstein as we all know has been extremely important to Science. The unexpected coorelation between Einstein and Arecibo in 1974 is evident as a Nobel prize was awarded due to Arecibo discovery of the Puslar in a "Binary system" and the astronomers helping to prove his Theory of General Releativity. It is a basic postulate of the theory of relativity that the speed of light is constant. Einstein even intensified all the "time travel" talk amongst scientists. Conicidence about Einsteins' connection to the 1974 Arecibo transmission? There is no such thing as a coincidence. It would take 22,800 light years at the speed of light to reach M13, yet we have crop formations 1 year apart at almost 26 years and almost 27, a factored difference of more than 1,000. In 1916 Einstein published his expanded General/Special Theory of Reletivity to include gravitation as a determiner of the curvature of a space-time continuum - time travel.

Many changes in 1974 to the Arecibo transmitter were made, enabling it to broadcast signals at a power of 20 terawatts. (1 Terawatt = 1 Trillion Watts) or more power than all the power outlets in the world at the time combined. The human template message marks the completion of such upgrades and the excitement of the achievement.

The Arecibo Human Template message was transmitted on November 16th, 1974 and consisted of 1,679 pulses of binary code (0's and 1's). The transmission lasted a little under three mintues (167.9 seconds) and was completed by modulating the frequency back and forth by about 10Hz (or 10 bits per second). The Arecibo Human Template was transmitted on a frequency of 2,388 MegaHertz which is significant. Arecibo is capable of the range between 1,000-3,000 MHz. 1,679 digits in the transmission are extremely important because 1679 is the result of 2 prime numbers, 23 and 73 or 23*73. Since math is about as universal of a language as we can determine, the binary code was seperated into a matrix of 23x73 columns or squares creating the "template" or "grid".

Your example is easily explainable, and reproducible. You, however, can not say the same for these designs in grain without any sign of (what we know as) normal human intervention.

Convince me that humans could make such a complex design in one night, and leave no footprints in or out of the field, not be discovered while in the process, maintain mathematical precision while not being able to see the whole, and create an exact replica of complex data sent into space decades ago.

Humans can become virtual ghosts if they want to. My post was to show that apparent complexity of design or structure doesn't nessasarily mean complexity of designing the structure. You seem to think if "it looks too hard, it must be". The snow flake was to show an example of something with apparently complexity (that would be difficulty to make straight out), but who's structure can be created using a rather simplistic method. Also, it's not for this specific instance of design, but rather your broad argument for humans not making them. It's simply flawed. Apparently complexity doesn't nessasarily mean complex methods of creating it (look at certain fractals for good examples). Also many designs I've seen for crop circles are variations on fractals...many of which can be made using simple technique that only require a small section at a time to be viewed to create the whole (a simple example of this are the Koch curves). Your argument that apparently complex designs require sophisticated methods of creation is the main flaw in the more broad argument you use to try to claim humans didn't make them.

-The Hajman-

Beam me up, Scotty.

Serioously, Intelligent life elsewhere is probable to the point of essential certainty.

The numbers of Suns and planets in the big U are simply enormous beyond any comprehension.

Its interesting to know the components of our attempted communications with e-ts.

Someday this will be a reality.

pPerhaps not yet or perhaps not in our lifetime or for a few hundred lifetimes; perhaps sooner.

Who knows.

You apparently assume a great deal about my intelligence (why, I do not know), and nowhere have I made any argument about complexity of design in and of itself precluding human origination. I have seen the so-called 'debunkers' demonstrating their rudimentary skills...and I have no doubt that some 'crop circles' are simply pranks.

Tell you what. You give a general location near where you are, and tomorrow morning have a crop circle appear there which contains the representation of an atom of water, the binary value for Pi (to ten decimal places), two prime numbers of four digits each, and an Alfred E. Neumann 'What, me worry?' face, and I'll believe that all of these were likely done by humans. Otherwise, I'm free to speculate.

What I am saying is that human origination can not account for all of the phenomena collectively known as 'crop circles', nor all of the characteristics associated therewith. And I really can not conceive of someone (or even groups of human someones) going to all that bother for a practical joke.

I know this is what you're saying. This I stated was your argument (if I was vague, then I hope to be more clear this time around). Your argument seems to hinge on "If I don't know how it's done, no one else can do it". You're also the one making the positive absolute claim of aliens doing it (meaning you have more weigth of evidence to present then do we). Also, which is simplist: Some people have a technique you don't know about that do this for fun to see what kind of headlines they can get, or aliens (which haven't been proven to exist yet) waste time and energy to come over here and draw cute designs in our fields, when they could just simply respond in kind and 'wire' us back the answer? Also, if you assume aliens exist to be able to support your theory that they made the crop circles, you can't use the crop circles to provide evidence that aliens exist (without falling into circular reasoning).

Tell you what. You give a general location near where you are, and tomorrow morning have a crop circle appear there which contains the representation of an atom of water, the binary value for Pi (to ten decimal places), two prime numbers of four digits each, and an Alfred E. Neumann 'What, me worry?' face, and I'll believe that all of these were likely done by humans. Otherwise, I'm free to speculate.

Tell you what. You come over here and show me how to levitate a person just like the pro illusionists do it, and I'll believe it can be done. Or do any of the illusionist tricks that only they know, or else I won't believe they can do it (even though they don't show people how they do it). That line of argument's a bit silly, isn't it? Your argument seems to fall under the same line of reasoning, and is flawed do to the same reason. The crop circles we're pertinent to this thread might or might not have been non-man made, but that doesn't help your argument any. Your arugment isn't flawed because it's a possibility, it's flawed because your trying to ask others to prove a negative on an argumentum ad ignorantiam (argument of ignorance: saying "because I don't see how it could be done, that means it can't").

-The Hajman-

I begin to see. Evidently we are too disparate to effectively communicate. My original post meant, to me, 'If you folks seem to think this to be so childish and funny, then it should be no big deal for you to explain every facet of these phenomena.' I guess you took it as 'In the absence of demonstrable proof of the technique involved, I positively assert that aliens did it.'

It is really no great skin off my nose, either way. I happen to believe there are many things we can not explain, and that I am perfectly free to believe about them as I wish, lacking any definitive scientific data/analysis. I do not, however, insist that everyone else believe similarly.

(I ain't real serious about too many things, Haj...;^)

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