Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to "Why should it have started in Space?"

FYI - The Arecibo Message was not a NASA project
Socrates II — (archived)

Arecibo Observatory was and is run by the National Science Foundation (NSF),
not NASA. Cornell University maintains the facility.

In November, 1974, the largest single radio telescope on Earth (until the
Chinese get their 500-meter dish built), had aluminum plates incorporated
on the dish. In order to celebrate this upgrade, several astronomers
decided to create a message and send it into deep space. This is what
became known as the Arecibo Message.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/goldberg/setimsg.html

Globular star cluster Messier 13 in the constellation of Hercules was
chosen as the target for two main reasons: It was well within the
target zone of the dish, which has only so much mobility, and the many
stars of this cluster give the message more targets to hit.

One could also add that its great distance of 25,000 light years would
ensure that anyone who gets the message at M13 and has less than
nice intentions would not be able to get to Earth any faster than 25,000
years later, so we have 50,000 years to get ready for them. But that
seems like an awfully long way to go to go after one little planet.

Like most globular star clusters, Messier 13 contains primarily very old
stars, plus the gravitational interactions between such close suns might
make planet stability very precarious. Astronomers have searched for
exoworlds around stars in globular clusters with little luck, which means
planets either have trouble getting formed to begin with or get knocked
around if they do make it out of the birth cloud stages.

There are of course star systems in the path of the message beam
along the way, but I have never seen any studies of these stars and
their potential for life-bearing worlds.

Honestly I think the Chilton "circle" is among the more obvious hoaxes,
though it is nice to see the imagination put into it for a change instead
of the usual abstract patterns. And why didn't they do this at the
facility that sent the Message in the first place? Not enough crops?

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