A Cosmic Call to Nearby Stars (APOD 2009 July 12)

[neufer]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090712.html

http://www.matessa.org/~mike/dutil/p11.html

Boy...are those aliens going to be pissed when they discover that there are just 8 planets!

[orin stepanek]

Actually if aliens were studying our system; they may add the trans Neptunium objects as part of the tally. Who knows how they would categorize them. I wonder how we will when our instruments are good enough to tally stellar systems objects. Then maybe we may see how unfair it was to demote Pluto when we should have been adding to the planetary tally.
Go Pluto!!Yea!!

Orin

[bystander]

Or perhaps they will wonder at how stupid we are when they find 20 or more planets, including that binary planet, Pluto/Charon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_planet

[The Code]

I think we really should do everything possible to avoid a real independence day. I am 100% that the universe is teaming with life and 50% of it will be thousands/millions of years ahead of us... I say be careful...

Mark

[apodman]

The bottom line on page 1 of the message as shown in the APOD is the largest know prime number at the time (2^3021377-1).

Computing power has improved since then, and now we know hundreds of larger prime numbers (the largest as of today is 2^43112609-1, a number with over 12 million digits).

Two features of the notation used for 2^3021377-1 (the raised exponent and the minus sign) are not introduced elsewhere on the page before they are used and so provide a bit of a [head?] scratcher for aliens if the notation is not also used on a subsequent page.

[Loco]

Neuf you're hillarious.

Don't pee the aliens off? Hey, don't pee the tolls off!

Bystander, you're right on, too. I would have used the Piss word except I saw your name on the board, and recognize your authority.

[neufer]

The bottom line on page 1 of the message as shown in the APOD is the largest know prime number at the time (2^3021377-1).

Computing power has improved since then, and now we know hundreds of larger prime numbers (the largest as of today is 2^43112609-1, a number with over 12 million digits).

Two features of the notation used for 2^3021377-1 (the raised exponent and the minus sign) are not introduced elsewhere on the page before they are used and so provide a bit of a [head?] scratcher for aliens if the notation is not also used on a subsequent page.

What kind of a scratcher

Actually 3021377 still holds the record for being:
the largest known Mersenne prime exponent
that is smaller than half of the next Mersenne prime exponent:

Code: Select all

n	p   	      next p
-------------------------------
1	127	       521
2	607	       1279
3	4423	      9689
4	216091	    756839
5	3021377	   6972593

[/b]
Curiously, 127 is not only the smallest Mersenne prime exponent
which is smaller than half of the next Mersenne prime exponent
but it is the basis of the 127 x 127 message array of 16129 bits.

Probably, the alien's kindergartners would immediately recognize
3021377 for what it is (hopefully, without having to scratch anything).

Working backwards from 3021377 they should immediately recognize
the purpose of the superscript notation and the minus 1 sign.

[apodman]

Working backwards from 3021377 they should immediately recognize
the purpose of the superscript notation and the minus 1 sign.

As did we all.

[neufer]

-------------------------------------------------

Synthesis and Transmission of Cosmic Call 2003
Interstellar Radio Message

The team used the National Space Agency of Ukraine's Evpatoria Planetary Radar (EPR) in Crimea. The broadcast was a follow-on to Team Encounter's Cosmic Call 1999. The transmitting system of the EPR has not been changed since 1999. Its main characteristics are as follows:

the central frequency is 5.01 GHz, and the effective area of the transmitting antenna is about 2500 square meters.

The work is conducted from a highly stable hydrogen generator in a mode of continuous coherent radiation with average capacity up to 150 kW. The digital information is transmitted using carrying frequency manipulation with a deviation of 48 kHz: The nominal shift of +24 kHz corresponds to the symbol "1" and the shift of -24 kHz corresponds to the symbol "0." We assume the technology THERE is only ten years more advanced than our own. For a distance of 50 light-years, corresponding calculations give the value of 400 bits per second as the appropriate transmission rate for broadcast of Cosmic Call 2003's scientific messages. Three basic messages of the scientific message - the Interstellar Rosetta Stone, the 1974 Arecibo Message, and the Bilingual Image Glossary - were transmitted thrice to avoid message fading. The Interstellar Rosetta Stone (ISR) is a message created by Canadian scientists Yvan Dutil and Stephane Dumás, authors of a similar Scientific Message in Cosmic Call 1999. The size of the ISR is 263906 bits with 127 symbols in each of 2078 lines. [Their] message of 1999 consisted of 23 pages where each page was 127 X 127 binary elements.>>

-------------------------------------------------

What Is the Water-Hole?

<<The electromagnetic spectrum, as viewed from Earth, is a noisy place. Low frequencies are plagued by galactic noise, primarily due to synchrotron radiation (charged particles spiraling through our Sun's and our planet's magnetic fields). High frequencies are subject to quantum-effect emissions, and the whole continuum experiences a 3 Kelvin background radiation level from the residual radiation of the Big Bang. These natural radiation sources limit our ability to detect artificial emissions. In addition, the Earth's own ocean of air generates spectral absorption and emission lines which draw a further curtain across our sky. Fortunately, there are a few relatively clear windows on the cosmos. Our eyes evolved to operate in one such window, the optical spectrum. It is this window which first allowed us to observe the stars and planets. Another clear spot is in the microwave region, between about 1 and 10 GHz.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

• Water-Hole spectrum

[Note: Galaxies are "radio quiet" at frequencies above 2 GHZ but
earthbound radio telescopes must avoid the broad tropospheric 22 GHZ water vapor line.]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Within this so-called Microwave Window, photons (the substance of electromagnetic communication) travel relatively unimpeded through the interstellar medium, at the speed of light. This is, as far as we know, the fastest possible speed, making photons the fastest spaceships known to man. Thus the Microwave Window, where natural noise is at a minimum, is a favored region for conducting radio astronomy research, including SETI.

Toward the bottom of the microwave window, radiation from the precession of interstellar hydrogen is clearly heard in our receivers at a frequency of 1420.40575 MHz (corresponding to a wavelength around 21 cm). The Hydrogen Line, first detected by Ewen and Purcell at Harvard University in 1951, provided us with our first direct evidence that space is anything but an empty void -- it is a veritable chemistry set. We hypothesize that any civilization in the cosmos which possesses radio astronomy knows about the Hydrogen Line. Since there is roughly one hydrogen atom per cubic centimeter of space, the combined voices of countless hydrogen atoms produce a raucous chorus. The very first SETI studies were conducted near the Hydrogen Line, and today it still looks like a logical place to seek deliberate beacons from beyond.

Just a little way up the spectrum, near 1660 MHz (a wavelength of 18 cm), a team of scientists at MIT Lincoln Labs detected in the 1960s a cluster of radiation lines from interstellar hydroxyl ions (OH). Like the Hydrogen Line, the Hydroxyl Lines occur near the very quietest part of the radio spectrum. They too should be known to other civilizations which have studied the cosmos at radio frequencies.

The chemist looks at H and OH and recognizes them as the disassociation products of water, the solvent essential to the very existence of life as we know it. During the landmark Cyclops study of 1971, Dr. Bernard M. Oliver, then vice-president of engineering for Hewlett-Packard Company (and later the chief of the NASA SETI program) hypothesized that the Hydrogen and Hydroxyl lines constituted obvious signposts to a natural interstellar communications band, one which would likely occur to other water-based lifeforms who had some knowledge of the radio sky. Since the H and OH lines are visible from anywhere in the cosmos, in the quietest part of the spectrum, they are markers which are by no means geocentric.

It was Barney Oliver who dubbed the spectral region between H and OH the Cosmic Water-Hole. "Where shall we meet our neighbors?" he asked. "At the water-hole, where species have always gathered."

Although other regions of the spectrum hold much promise, The SETI League and other organizations concentrate a part of their resources on the Water-Hole, in hopes that there we might detect signs of other life.>>

-----------------------------------------

[apodman]

Curiously, 127 is not only the smallest Mersenne prime exponent
which is smaller than half of the next Mersenne prime exponent
but it is the basis of the 127 x 127 message array of 16129 bits.

That makes 127 an interesting number.

What is the smallest uninteresting number?

Paradoxically, there is no smallest uninteresting number since being that would make it interesting. Ha ha.

[apodman]

It was Barney Oliver who dubbed the spectral region between H and OH the Cosmic Water-Hole. "Where shall we meet our neighbors?" he asked. "At the water-hole, where species have always gathered."

The primitive aliens have emerged from and started to crawl away from the water hole using the elbows of their forelimbs and some type of stick. The more advanced aliens with four limbs stand by to observe the phenomenon.

---

A lion and elephant were drinking from the water hole when a turtle approached. The elephant smacked the turtle across the hole with his trunk, the lion asked why, and the elephant said the same turtle had bitten his trunk many years ago. The lion questioned the elephant's memory that it was the same turtle, but the elephant claimed to have turtle recall.

[neufer]

The primitive aliens have emerged from and started to crawl away from the water hole using the elbows of their forelimbs and some type of stick. The more advanced aliens with four limbs stand by to observe the phenomenon.

I think we really should do everything possible to avoid a real independence day. I am 100% that the universe is teaming with life and 50% of it will be thousands/millions of years ahead of us... I say be careful...

-----------------------------------------------------------

Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms
September 7, 1710 – July 2, 1715

<<Despite his earlier intention of remaining at home, Gulliver returns to sea as a captain. On this voyage he is forced to find new additions to his crew who he believes to have turned the rest of the crew against him. His crew then mutiny and after keeping him contained for some time resolve to leave him on the first piece of land they come across and continue on as pirates. He is abandoned in a landing boat and comes first upon a race of (apparently) hideous deformed creatures to which he conceives a violent antipathy. Shortly thereafter he meets a horse and comes to understand that the horses (in their language Houyhnhnm or "the perfection of nature") are the rulers and the deformed creatures ("Yahoos") are human beings in their base form. Gulliver becomes a member of the horse's household, and comes to both admire and emulate the Houyhnhnms and their lifestyle, rejecting humans as merely Yahoos endowed with some semblance of reason which they only use to exacerbate and add to the vices Nature gave them. However, an Assembly of the Houyhnhnms rules that Gulliver, a Yahoo with some semblance of reason, is a danger to their civilization and he is expelled. He is then rescued, against his will, by a Portuguese ship, and is surprised to see that the captain, a Yahoo, is a wise, courteous and generous person. He returns to his home in England. However, he is unable to reconcile himself to living among Yahoos; he becomes a recluse, remaining in his house, largely avoiding his family and his wife, and spending several hours a day speaking with the horses in his stables (...and posting to The Asterisk*)>>

[orin stepanek]

Or perhaps they will wonder at how stupid we are when they find 20 or more planets, including that binary planet, Pluto/Charon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_planet

How about 40 or more? http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/dwarfplanets/

Orin

[aristarchusinexile]

The illustration of the message is confused in structure. More simplicity is needed to reveal higher intelligence.