Still Sorting Factoids

[feng_shui_house]

Sorting and organising things is very soothing to me. I'm down to 329 left to go from the original 1195. It's always interesting to me how seemingly random collections- if big enough- tend to generate categories.

I was particularly amused to discover that two Japanese astronomers got drunk back in 1983 and sent an email (13 71X71 pixel images) to the Altair solar system. It included the molecular formula for ethanol, kanji characters for 'kanpai' and the English word 'Toast'. The email was lost and only rediscovered in 2008. Theoretically we could have had a reply in 2015.

https://gizmodo.com/390304/earth-set-to-receive-alien-reply-invasion-in-2015

Personally, I'm thinking that Rocket Raccoon intercepted it.

Comments

[haldane]

Nah, if Rocket had intercepted it he would have sent something rude in reply.

[feng_shui_house]

He used the formula and got too drunk to remember the email. ;^)

[watervole]

How on Earth can one send an email where there is no Internet?

[feng_shui_house]

I suppose it depends on how you define email. I guess they mean it's not a physical message but a signal that has to be decoded.

I'm not sure HOW they do it, but I'm guessing it's pulsed radio signals that fill up imaginary grids with the non-pulse showing as blank and the pulse as a filled square so you wind up with a graphic.

No idea how someone receiving the message is supposed to figure it out!

[watervole]

I can get a pattern of pulsed radio signals, but why call it an email rather than a radio message?

The trick is to have a recognised pattern at the end of each line, so the grid pattern is easy to spot.

[feng_shui_house]

I'm guessing the news article was written by someone who felt email was more understandable (although wrong) than radio signals, because email is usually text and images. I suppose they didn't want to explain how information encoded in radio worked.

[watervole]

Intellectual laziness I can understand.

I am perfectly sure that other people have sent out messages via radio telescope. I remember reading about the encoding technique decades ago.

[feng_shui_house]

There's been MANY radio messages deliberately sent into space. I think most, if not all, of them used the same encoding technique.

And then there's Voyager-sent out to take photos of the solar system & also carried stuff to show aliens. I thought it was a really confusing and mostly useless collection of images, with a disproportionate amount given to a few categories.

https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/images-on-the-golden-record/

[vera_j]

Now these guys´ message might have better sense than most of other messages, LOL!
But the aliens would invade only to get the drinks, I believe!

[feng_shui_house]

Mars wants Vodka! :^)