Aliens RESPOND to the Arecibo Message!

Three aliens observe Arecibo Message from Earth and think Earthlings are bad at pixel art.

It may be a surprise, but I am only now reading 1st book on UFOs ( I have been mostly interested in aliens as fiction or in ttRPGs). I just learned about the Arecibo Message.

Frank Drake sent a message of 1679 bits to his fellow UFO friends and said that this was a mathematical message he wanted to send to the aliens. While not all cultures share language, we all share math.

To test if it was decode-able, he asked them to figure out what it meant with no other context. They failed.

So he sent it to more UFO friends. They failed, too.

So he put it in a decoder magazine and got exactly one correct answer from an electrician. 1679 is the product of two semi-prime numbers, which should get you to realize it’s a 23 *73 picture.

Bu needless to say if the interpretation rate was that low amongst earthlings, the hopes for alien communication seemed dim. Especially since the message will take 25K years to arrive.

But we do have C’therax and Friends’ take above – admittedly the DNA double helix (blue) does look like a butterflyish thing.


Check out Under a Hostile Sun, a game of planetary exploration!

Leave a comment