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Gold Artifact To Orbit Earth In Hope of Alien Retrieval

Posted by samzenpus on from the leaving-them-something dept.

Lucas123 writes "The problem: What do you leave behind that billions of years from now, and without context, would give aliens an some kind of accurate depiction of mankind. The answer: A gold-plated silicon disc with just 100 photos. That's the idea behind The Last Pictures project, which is scheduled to blast off in the next few months from Kazakhstan and orbit the earth for 5 billion years. The photos, etched into the silicon using a bitmap format, were chosen over a five-year process that involved interviews with artists, philosophers, and MIT scientists, who included biologists, physicists, and astronomers. To each, was posed a single question: What photos would you choose to send into outer space? The answer became an eclectic mix of images from pre-historic cave paintings to a photo of a group of people taken by a predator drone."

11 of 282 comments (clear)

  1. make a mirror... by Razgorov+Prikazka · · Score: 5, Funny

    That way they will be tricked into thinking that we look just like them and hopefully they wont be as hostile as some movies predict.
    Anyway, I for one, welcome our new gold prospecting overlords!

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    rm -rf --no-preserve-root / ...and let /dev/null sort them out...
  2. yeah but it won't last that long. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    In a few hundred years, some teenager who's nicked his Dad's space car will go and steal it.

  3. Copyright License? by TaoPhoenix · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Sir! We have a lot of pictures!"

    "Leave them alone, Lieutenant. We don't have the copyright license to copy them, because the owners are long dead."

    "But Sir!"

    "I SAID, leave them alone! Haven't you heard of biogenic-nuclear copyright licenses? Without the antidote we'd all die."

    --
    My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
    1. Re:Copyright License? by alexgieg · · Score: 3, Funny

      "Leave them alone, Lieutenant. We don't have the copyright license to copy them, because the owners are long dead."

      You made me remember the plot of a short story I read, I think, in an old Asimov SF magazine. Aliens come here in the stone age, become quite amazed at cave painting, a completely novel art form for them, but cannot make copies and must delete the recordings because their ethical system requires them to pay for cultural goods with some other cultural good of theirs at the same technological level, but all they have is more advanced than stone age tech, so no exchange, and no cave paintings for them. One of them however has a nice idea: giving humanity bows and arrows. The other aliens are doubtful, arguing that's quite a technological leap for humanity, which might not be ready to deal with such weapons. The other guy prevails though, with an argument akin to: "Hey, they're almost there anyway, and those paintings are soooo nice. After all, it's just bow and arrows. What could possibly go wrong?" And so they depart, with their properly purchased photos and a new art form, and in exchange we get a new, efficient and very lethal new means of war.

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      Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
  4. 4 Chan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    We should just send up pictures from 4 chan.

    Then the universe will leave us alone.

    1. Re:4 Chan by Dutchmaan · · Score: 3, Funny

      If you saw an alien version of 4chan and had the power to destroy a planet.. would you hesitate?

    2. Re:4 Chan by somersault · · Score: 3, Funny

      That depends - do they have a Boxxy?

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      which is totally what she said
  5. Overkill by 1 or 2 Billion Years by Scarletdown · · Score: 5, Funny

    Designed to last for 5 billion years? Won't it and the Earth be one with the sun in about 3 or 4 billion?

    Anyway, I think we should baffle the aliens with a bit of bullshit and have a set of pictures that are screenshots of the Death Star destroying Alderaan. Hilarity ensues when word gets out about this and aliens from all over the galaxy scramble to tear up our long dead world in search of any useful information about this tech that allowed the great and ancient civilization that thrived here to build a space station with enough firepower to destroy an entire planet.

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  6. Re:Rosetta Stone by JurgenThor · · Score: 5, Funny

    Mathematical/scientific language

    Spoken language is unique, but mathematical language is universal, for a start every alien capable of space flight will know what integers are.

    not it they're using javascript

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    GENERAL PUBLIC SIGNATURE (GPS) Any replies (derivatives) of this post must also use the GPS
  7. Re:Rosetta Stone by cdrudge · · Score: 4, Funny

    If they are using javascript for space flight, all we'll need to do to defeat them is fly Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith up to their ship to infect them with NoScript.

  8. Re:Rosetta Stone by SJester · · Score: 5, Funny

    Not true. Jabba the Hutt spoke Subtitle.