Cosmic Call
August 11, 2015 4:16 PM   Subscribe

“In 1999, two Canadian astrophysicists, Stéphane Dumas and Yvan Dutil, composed and sent a message into space. The message was composed of twenty-three pages of bitmapped data, and was sent from the RT-70 radio telescope in Yevpatoria, Ukraine, as part of a set of messages called Cosmic Call.”

Over the next few weeks, Mark Jason Dominus is writing a series of articles to his blog exploring each of the 23 images. Can you decode their information before reading his explanations?

Three articles are already published: (Cosmic Call and other CETI messages previously on MeFi.)
posted by mbrubeck (20 comments total) 18 users marked this as a favorite
 
Why is 13 missing on page 1? Maybe this will explain on the bottom?
posted by symbioid at 4:22 PM on August 11, 2015


Because it's unlucky, of course!

(But really, I think it just includes enough examples to make the patterns clear. It also skips from 15 to 20.)
posted by mbrubeck at 4:25 PM on August 11, 2015


Why would aliens want to see the sprite library from that E.T. Atari game
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:28 PM on August 11, 2015 [6 favorites]


Sure, but 15-20 ok, that's 5 apart (and yeah, I guess 12-14 is 1 apart)... It just... its' weird.

But then there's that sideways looking motherfucker on the bottom series, second to last. And there's no correlation to any of the above numbers, so I thought - maybe THAT is 13, but then realize in the list of primes 13 is not a singular number, but, like the other base 10+ numbers is signified by 10s placement.

So what is that sideways thing? Hrmm... And what is that sequence at the bottom?
posted by symbioid at 4:35 PM on August 11, 2015


Heh - Minus, I think based on next page. I'll shut up and see what I can do and stop threadshitting.
posted by symbioid at 4:40 PM on August 11, 2015


Yeah, getting the bottom thing requires you to know things that aren't explained until later, or to be able to guess based on the other content of the (bottom half of the) page and some knowledge about how we generate very large versions of those.
posted by ckape at 4:52 PM on August 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Yeah I realized I was close to it, once I figured out the raised and the negative sign. Wasn't sure what it was, and of course, damn windows calc doesn't actually calc that high! (I didn't attach significance to what it was until your comment, though)
posted by symbioid at 4:59 PM on August 11, 2015


Just think how many opportunities for first contact have been missed because we assume all aliens are space geniuses
posted by sevenyearlurk at 5:06 PM on August 11, 2015 [6 favorites]


I think it says "kimota."
posted by vrakatar at 5:12 PM on August 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


It's a suicide note saying "Open for lunch" or "Dinner is served" or "Come and get it!" A species ending "fat tail" moment. Like dripping blood in the ocean while swimming. You don't know what's out there so why attract "it" or "them". cheers.
posted by SteveLaudig at 5:15 PM on August 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Well, even if the aliens never figure it out we at least gave them some new stuff to tattoo on their upper arm-analogs and engrave on their swords.
posted by ckape at 5:20 PM on August 11, 2015 [10 favorites]


So - am I strange for thinking there should be a different symbol for "repeating given pattern for all eternity" and "irrational number"? Like .0909.... vs 3.14159::: or something. Not in our everyday world, but in this thing. Because I think it could convey something deeper than just "goes to infinity"
posted by symbioid at 5:22 PM on August 11, 2015


All...your...base...
posted by Thorzdad at 5:34 PM on August 11, 2015 [7 favorites]


It's a suicide note saying "Open for lunch" or "Dinner is served" or "Come and get it!" A species ending "fat tail" moment. Like dripping blood in the ocean while swimming. You don't know what's out there so why attract "it" or "them". cheers.

You shouldn't say "cheers" sarcastically, that word means something you know
posted by clockzero at 7:09 PM on August 11, 2015


Any aliens with the wherewithall to get here should have no trouble finding us without this message. And they'd probably be really impatient for the download to finish. Then they'd come visit to give us all high-speed internet!

The fact that this has not yet happened just proves there are no aliens!
posted by Sunburnt at 10:10 PM on August 11, 2015


Why did they invent new (and pretty busy) glyphs instead of using established Arabic numerals?

This message also has the same "flaw" as the Arecibo message in that it assumes the receiving life forms have a thinking that's able to grasp sequence data reformatted as scanlines in a 2D image. Maybe a straight sequential message would be a better "Hello" message.
posted by ymgve at 4:08 AM on August 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


18 obviously means “Grumpy fried egg is grumpy while the Vision On logo looks on.”
posted by scruss at 4:49 AM on August 12, 2015


@ymgve: I think both of those are answered in part 0. The glyphs are part of an overall error-absorbing design and the scanline-basis is fairly essential, but obvious: prime numbers and repeating patterns lead clearly to a grid layout.
posted by mikewebkist at 8:16 AM on August 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


Great! Now they'll come here, take all our wimmin-folks, and leave us their algebra homework.
posted by Chitownfats at 2:53 PM on August 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


Also, since the info about a new page was published today, I'm gonna nitpick more and say that they should have used something like "53=5*5*5" to define the concept of exponentiation better. (Maybe they should also have done this for multiplication, by having an example of "2*3=3+3=2+2+2" though I understand space is a constraint)
posted by ymgve at 3:33 PM on August 14, 2015


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