
Arecibo message - Hooke
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message
======
err4nt
I created an animation of the Arecibo message in less than 1kb of Javascript:
[https://js1k.com/2017-magic/demo/2843](https://js1k.com/2017-magic/demo/2843)

Here's a video of the animation playing:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMzwmdaloXc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMzwmdaloXc)

It was a lot of fun to put together, and I know where was a lot of human
thought put into the message, but after working with the data of this message
for dozens (hundreds?) of hours finessing it and making it as small as
possible, the longer I looked at it the less I believe any alien receiving it
would be able to decode the meaning we communicated in it. I imagine it's
evidence of terrestrial intelligence for aliens who might wonder if they're
alone, but I'm not sure how well the intended meaning of the message itself
will come through to a non-human being if it's not even obvious to a human
being that already knows what it is.

~~~
vinchuco
It's a big problem not knowing the audience.

[1] 47:00
[https://youtu.be/_ZG8HBuDjgc?t=47m10s](https://youtu.be/_ZG8HBuDjgc?t=47m10s)

------
cfadvan
I can’t be the only person who thinks that broadcasting with the intent of
advertising our presence is at best, pointless, and at worse dangerous, right?
Passive SETI is great, if unlikely to succeed, but this just seems like a bad
idea.

~~~
Ftuuky
I see you're also a proponent of the "Dark Forest theory".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Forest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Forest)

~~~
sudhirj
It doesn’t really matter who’s a proponent of what - if life is not singular
then you have to assume it’s relatively common, and then you have to assume
that messages like this will reach aliens on a wide spectrum of hostility and
advancement.

~~~
Zigurd
Unless some unknown physics makes space-opera style fast travel possible, what
would be the meaning of hostility? Based on what motive? Expressed how? Space
isn't tribes of chimps in adjacent trees.

If we find aliens it will be more like "Don't let the Great Filter get you and
maybe we'll have a really slow conversation."

~~~
sudhirj
Relativity muddles things a bit. If any civilization lives on a ship that can
get near the speed of light, coming to destroy us would take only a few hours
or days in their time, even if it took hundreds of years in hours.

~~~
goatlover
But why bother using all that energy? And It will be a huge amount to get
light years down to hours.

What threat would we be to them?

~~~
sudhirj
We're always a threat. All we need today is a closet Hitler type rising to
power in any of the nuclear countries - and that's just today. No idea what
socio political landscape will be when the world is hot, water and food
scarce, and we know there are aliens out there.

------
saagarjha
> The number 1,679 was chosen because it is a semiprime (the product of two
> prime numbers), to be arranged rectangularly as 73 rows by 23 columns.

Why not pick the square of a prime number, so that it can't be arranged to
wrong way?

~~~
V-2
Perhaps the clear difference in entropy between 23x73 and 73x23 renderings
actually stresses the fact that the data conveys a thoughtfully arranged
message of some sort.

~~~
saagarjha
IMO the choice of a nondiscrete semiprime data length is a pretty good
indicator that it isn't random either…

------
Rooster61
Something that always bothered me about this transmission is the fact that the
numbers at the top are said to represent 1-10 in binary format. However, when
I look at this, when you get to the 8th digit, it shoves the next block out to
the side, representing an overflow so that additional numbers can be
represented. Is this not representative of the very definition of how to
express numbers in a different base? This isn't binary, it's octal. When you
rollover after the 7th digit, you have a new set of 8 characters that can
represent a discreet unit. I sort of understand how they are passing this off
as binary, but without reading an explanation of what this represents, my
first instinct is to consider it octal.

~~~
lisper
> This isn't binary, it's octal

Potato, potahto.

~~~
8bitsrule
Not if you own a Heathkit H-8, it isn't.

(Possibly the only computer made ...note that qualifier, please ... that
required most users to learn a number base in order to operate it.)

