Ancestors

Toot

Written by jo lang uste fonts on 2025-02-04 at 13:59

We all know about the Pioneer Plaque and Voyager’s Golden Record but have you seen the ‘Water Words’ on the Europa Clipper. It is a plate made of tantalum and has the waveforms of the sound of the word water in 103 languages engraved on one side.

Its a plate of semiotic beauty and I hope future lifeforms will not listen to it backwards.

https://europa.nasa.gov/spacecraft/vault-plate/?ref=longnow.org

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Descendants

Written by Tarnport on 2025-02-05 at 08:50

@jo This is gorgeous, and I am not really worried but... It always strikes me as if the frogs in my pond sent out a raft to broadcast all their weights and measures, their frogsong and locations, in parseltongue and hawkspeak.

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Written by Leonard Ritter on 2025-02-05 at 09:17

@Tarnport @jo the golden void scream disc

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Written by MugsysRapSheet 🔩🐑🐘 on 2025-02-05 at 22:58

@jo

With our luck, half of the sounds on this plaque will be curse words & insults in the alien's native language, and if one happens to sound like "water", it'll be dismissed as a fluke. 🤔

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Written by zetta june, chaos arc on 2025-02-06 at 00:27

@jo now thats what i call a thirst trap

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Written by aburka 🫣 on 2025-02-06 at 00:48

@jo seems like it's missing an attempt to include self-describing instructions for decoding the waveforms, like the golden record has

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Written by SnoopJ on 2025-02-06 at 01:45

@aburka @jo the odds of it being decoded are low even by the standards of "craft with some cool stuff on it", on account of going to Europa instead of even leaving the solar system (which still keeps the odds astronomically (sorry) low)

It keeps in the tradition of "we're doing this because it's beautiful, not because it's practical"

But it's relying on pretty the same waveform leaps-of-intuition that the Golden Record does anyway, even if it's missing a reference timescale, distance, etc. There's only so much space and this is a more novel use of it IMO.

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Written by aburka 🫣 on 2025-02-06 at 01:49

@SnoopJ @jo yeah the timing reference is what I was thinking of, even though the chance is vanishingly small that a discoverer would figure it out

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Written by SnoopJ on 2025-02-06 at 01:51

@aburka @jo I had missed that the obverse of this plaque includes a ruler of sorts, but I can't tell from a glance if it establishes time and distance against chemical reference, or if it's just one or the other

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Written by aburka 🫣 on 2025-02-06 at 01:54

@SnoopJ @jo there's also that pulsar map to Earth but I think we now know there are so many that it's like pointing out a few grains of sand on the beach as landmarks

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Written by JulieR on 2025-02-06 at 01:48

@jo I love this!

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Written by The Eddie Show 📷 🎧 ❤️ on 2025-02-06 at 05:30

@jo

"We all know..." 🤣

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