Voyager’s ‘Cosmic Map’ of Earth’s location is hopelessly wrong (Synopsis) [Starts With A Bang]

“We [are] a species endowed with hope and perseverance, at least a little intelligence, substantial generosity and a palpable zest to make contact with the cosmos.” -Carl Sagan

When the Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft were launched, they contained a message emblazoned on them: a map of 14 pulsars, showing the location of Earth relative to them. This was a brilliant idea: showcase bright, unique identifiers, complete with their observed periods and distances from our world, and people would be able to find Earth. If we wanted to be found, it was the best idea 1977 had to offer.

A colorized version of the 14 pulsars encodes information about their relative distance and their pulse timing to 12 significant figures. Image credit: Sam W of Simple Desktops.

But 40 years later, the idea is fundamentally flawed. There are up to a billion pulsars in the Milky Way, their periods change long-term, and their orientations are variable over time, meaning they won’t be pointing at Earth in the future. If we wanted to be detected, we’d be much better off sending the same information we use to detect exoplanetary systems today!

TRAPPIST-1 system compared to the solar system; all seven planets of TRAPPIST-1 could fit inside the orbit of Mercury. By delivering the mass, radius, atmospheric content and orbital parameters of the planets, along with astronomical information about our star, someone with advanced technology could identify our Solar System from afar. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Although it was a very clever idea presented just 10 years after the discovery of pulsars, we now know that Voyager’s cosmic map to find Earth will be hopelessly wrong by time an alien civilization finds it.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2uThuCE

“We [are] a species endowed with hope and perseverance, at least a little intelligence, substantial generosity and a palpable zest to make contact with the cosmos.” -Carl Sagan

When the Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft were launched, they contained a message emblazoned on them: a map of 14 pulsars, showing the location of Earth relative to them. This was a brilliant idea: showcase bright, unique identifiers, complete with their observed periods and distances from our world, and people would be able to find Earth. If we wanted to be found, it was the best idea 1977 had to offer.

A colorized version of the 14 pulsars encodes information about their relative distance and their pulse timing to 12 significant figures. Image credit: Sam W of Simple Desktops.

But 40 years later, the idea is fundamentally flawed. There are up to a billion pulsars in the Milky Way, their periods change long-term, and their orientations are variable over time, meaning they won’t be pointing at Earth in the future. If we wanted to be detected, we’d be much better off sending the same information we use to detect exoplanetary systems today!

TRAPPIST-1 system compared to the solar system; all seven planets of TRAPPIST-1 could fit inside the orbit of Mercury. By delivering the mass, radius, atmospheric content and orbital parameters of the planets, along with astronomical information about our star, someone with advanced technology could identify our Solar System from afar. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Although it was a very clever idea presented just 10 years after the discovery of pulsars, we now know that Voyager’s cosmic map to find Earth will be hopelessly wrong by time an alien civilization finds it.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2uThuCE