Back in the 70s, Jimmy Carter had the mission of dedicating a message to the extraterrestrial civilization that wanted to read it.
Scientific progress is not at odds with hope. The infinite possibilities about what the human being does not know, in his attempt to dominate a practically infinite universe, lead us to venture into opaque terrain. On this occasion, we want bring you a curious storywhere a letter addressed to an extraterrestrial civilization to discover is a new attempt by the human being to make himself known to the rest of the cosmos, even though there is no one on the other side.
We are capable of imaging outer space with telescopes like NuSTAR, but we still have no evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth. At the very least, we will introduce ourselves respectfully and politely.
File image of Jimmy Carter in the Oval Office. Wikimedia
A president, a letter and the hope of a future cosmic contact
As you can see below these lines, thanks to a publication on Reddit, we have learned the story behind a letter sent by then United States’s president to our cosmic neighbors. It was in summer of 1977 when the letter was written, with the intention that it be transported aboard the space probes North American, Voyager 1 being the one that is still traveling in space and more than 23,000 million kilometers from Earth.
It’s not just a letter, no. It is the letter that has traveled the farthest in space and along with a golden disc30 centimeters and devised by Carl Sagan, keep looking for a civilization lost in the cosmos By the way, the letter says in its introduction: ‘This Voyager ship was built by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million humans among the more than 4,000 million that inhabit planet Earth. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some, perhaps several, could be inhabited planets with civilizations capable of space travel. If any of these civilizations intercept this message and can understand its content, this is ours. message‘:
This is a gift from a small world far away, a detail of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our emotions. We are trying to survive our era so we can live in yours. We hope that one day, having solved the problems we face, we will join in community with galactic civilizations. This recording represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and incredible universe.