Ancestors

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

=> View attached media

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from jo@typo.social

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

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from aburka@hachyderm.io

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.

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from SnoopJ@hachyderm.io

Toot

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

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from aburka@hachyderm.io

Descendants

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

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from SnoopJ@hachyderm.io

Written by jo lang uste fonts on 2025-02-06 at 21:59

@SnoopJ @aburka

i think neither:

”The reverse side of Europa Clipper’s vault plate, featuring a handwritten poem by US Poet Laureate Ada Limón, the Drake Equation handwritten by astrophysicist Frank Drake, a drawing of the Jovian system, a tribute to planetary scientist Ron Greeley, and the radio emission lines known as the Water Hole’’

A hint to call on these numbers:

"These frequencies fall between the hydrogen emission line at 1420 megahertz and the hydroxyl line at 1660-1666 megahertz."

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from jo@typo.social

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

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from aburka@hachyderm.io