Pioneer Probes & Stupidity
Kottke wrote a bit about the Pioneer probes this morning, and it got me reading about them elsewhere. A cursory introduction: the Pioneer space probes 10 and 11 are among the furthest man-made objects from Earth. They both exceeded their missions by spectacular degrees (staying in radio contact far longer than anticipated) and returned extraordinary amounts of information about our solar system in the process. For example, there is Pioneer 10, which was launched in 1972. And then, over 30 years later:
The last, very weak signal from Pioneer 10 was received on January 23, 2003, when it was 7.5 billion miles (12 billion kilometres) from Earth.
Traveling at the speed of light, that signal took over 11 hours to reach earth. What I thought was particularly neat was the decision to attach plaques about humans and Earth on these deep space probes. The idea is that, against spectacular odds, perhaps something will find these probes one day, and decipher what we have engraved on these plaques.
Check out the reactions to the Pioneer plaque, though:
According to astronomer Frank Drake, there were many negative reactions to the plaque due to the fact that the human beings were displayed naked. The Chicago Sun-Times retouched its image to hide the genitals of the man and woman. The Los Angeles Times received “angry letters” from readers that accused NASA of wasting taxpayer money to send “obscenities” into space.
Let that sink in for a moment.
I don’t want to come off as elitist here, but if that little quote isn’t a testament to limitless human stupidity, I don’t know what is. I mean, we’re talking about potential communication with extra terrestrial beings — there’s a good chance that this plaque will be the last remnant of human kind, still flying through space, when the Earth itself is gone. And we’ve got people complaining that humans are shown naked.
I’m feeling a bit pessimistic about humanity this morning.
Comments
Sagert +1
That’s right, but I had forgotten; the human body is obscene. That’s why I should hate and fear myself so much. Oedipus really did have the right idea. Excuse me, I’m going to go break all my mirrors.
Dan McKeown
You own mirrors? What an exhibitionist.