After 35 Years, Another Message Sent From Arecibo

Posted by timothy on Sunday November 22, 2009 @03:11PM from the but-that's-an-aphone dept.

0xdeadbeef writes "Two weeks ago, MIT artist-in-residence Joe Davis used the Arecibo radio telescope to send a message to three stars in honor of the 35th anniversary of the famous Drake-Sagan transmission to M13 in 1974. It was apparently allowed but not endorsed by the director of the facility, and used a jury-rigged signal source on what will now be known as the 'coolest iPhone in the world.' The message encoded a DNA sequence, but no word yet on whether it disabled any alien shields. You can get the low-down on Centauri Dreams: Part 1, Part 2."

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Re:Wishful thinking by Anonymous Coward · 2009-11-22 16:00 · Score: 5, Interesting

You have no idea about what you are talking about. It is true that omni directional radio sources are subject to inverse square law, but directional signals degrade less slowly. Scientists have calculated that using the Arecibo dish at one megawatt the signal could be received by a similarly sized dish 10000 lightyears away. I think I trust calculations done by people with PhDs in astronomy more than calculations done by you and your friend