With the intention of contacting extraterrestrial life , the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA ) plans to send a message with information about human knowledge through binary code .
How do they plan to contact the aliens?
According to an article in Scientific American , NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory insists on contacting extraterrestrial life and plans to do so with a special 13-page message known as a “Beacon in the Galaxy . ”
Said document, which was shared on the arXiv.org site, shows basic information about human knowledge within the branches of mathematics, chemistry and biology.
“The motivation for the design was to deliver the maximum amount of information about our society and the human species in the minimum amount of message,” said Jonathan Jiang, NASA’s mission lead investigator.
How will they send the interstellar message?
Researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are already pinning down the best time of year to send the message.
Furthermore, they proposed a dense ring of stars that lies near the center of our galaxy as the possible place to do it.
This is what the message looks like in biannual code. (Credits: NASA)
Why do you want to contact extraterrestrial life?
In 1974, humanity first attempted to contact extraterrestrial life with the support of the Arecibo message , however, they were unsuccessful.
Today, almost 50 years later, experts believe that, with the support of technological advances, the chances of contacting extraterrestrial life are increasing.
“With improvements in digital technology, we can do much better than the (Arecibo message) in 1974,” Jiang added.
So far, the 13-page message is available for anyone to see, but it is written in binary code, a type of coding system that consists of an array of two characters, 0 and 1.
The contents cover topics such as the structure of DNA and the human body. (Credits: NASA)