Those of you reading this blog may remember my post about The Longest Conversation discussing the Arecibo Message, or Kevin Kelly’s on the Voyager Disk. But this week Lore Sjöberg over at AltText did the best, or at least most humorous, survey of messages sent into space. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but here is an excerpt:
The Pioneer Plaques
These are identical, gold-plated plaques attached to the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft. They feature a picture of the solar system, a picture of the probes and a pictorial representation of the hyperfine transition of neutral hydrogen. Ring any bells? No? Well, it also has a picture of a naked man and woman on it. Ah, yes. Now you remember.
Many people considered this nothing more than interstellar porn. Others objected to the fact that the man is the one waving his hand, presumably to give the woman time to bake the aliens a nice batch of muffins. My objection is that the people depicted have no body hair at all. Aliens are gonna come down and think we’re living in symbiosis with our pubes.
Grade: C
