In 1974, humanity took a bold step into the unknown. From the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, a powerful radio signal pierced the night sky. This wasn't your typical astronomical observation; it was a deliberate message aimed at the vast emptiness of space, carrying a beacon of our existence. This message, known as the Arecibo message, became a landmark event in our search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The Arecibo message wasn't born out of a sudden alien invasion scare or a Hollywood-esque first contact mission. It was a clever piggyback on a momentous occasion. The Arecibo Observatory had just undergone a major upgrade, and scientists wanted to showcase its newfound capabilities. They designed a pictorial message containing fundamental information about humanity and Earth. Imagine a cosmic postcard: The message, encoded in a binary format (1s and 0s), depicted our solar system, the numbers 1 to 10, the chemical makeup of DNA, and a stick figure representing a ...
“The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can't imagine”