The 1974 Arecibo Project
Connecting With Alien Intelligence?
Seeking Contact
The first image portrayed here was sent by scientists into deep space in 1974, using the enormous radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico — which was dismantled in 2020 after it began to break apart.
The purpose was to present evidence to would-be aliens that the transmission had an intelligent origin.
Each part of this image was carefully planned by scientists, including the late Professor Carl Sagan.
Order & Arrangement
Although the expectation is that would-be aliens see this image as "evidence" of intelligence, it seems that when some see the far superior “order and arrangement” of DNA — the machine code of life — they shy away from reaching the same conclusion!
DNA has, by many multiple orders of magnitude, much greater complexity than this transmission — impressive though the project was.
The Arecibo image.
Was this evidence to alien life of an "intelligent" sender?
DNA = over 3 BILLION ordered and arranged interacting molecules.
Did this originate from an intelligence?
Careful Planning
Any watchful intelligent aliens would, according to the plan, be able to reconstruct this image, and, due to its evident logical order and arrangement, they would conclude that it was sent by intelligent life! — At least, that was the intention.
If you received this Arecibo image from deep space, consisting of just 1,679 “bits” or dots, would you conclude that alien life with a high degree of intelligence constructed it? After all, the image was meticulously planned to serve as evidence of intentional order and arrangement.
3 Billion "Bits" versus 1,679 "Bits"
By contrast, would you conclude that the more than 3 billion “bits” of specifically arranged information in the DNA code . . . happened by a serendipitous series of undirected chance events?
Technical note: The expression "bits" cannot really be applied to highly complex DNA molecules! Whereas the Arecibo transmission really did consist of plain bits, on or off, white or black , 1 or 0. (It represented these by shifting the frequency of each "bit" in the transmission by 10 Hz.)
Copyright © 2024, Michael A. Barber, Designomics™ — All rights reserved.
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