We had a thread about universal translators in another forum a while ago, and this reminded me of the famous Pioneer plaque.
Would beings from another civilization really be able to understand it? The message may seem fairly clear to us, but it could be that it bases itself in graphic conventions that are peculiar to our species/cultures. Would the plaque just look like a series of unintelligible sketches to them? How likely is it that the message can be understood?
I'm curious to know what others think.

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"The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it." -George Bernard Shaw

I'm pretty confident that it would be remotely understandable. Considering a lot of the constants operating around the Universe (well, at least our understanding of them) I imagine life probably isn't too drastically different, since the origins of life on all planets would probably be pretty similar to those here on earth (those being that in certain conditions, certain elements and atoms rearrange themselves into certain amino acids...which in turn rearrange themselves into certain protiens..which in turn rearrange themselves into..etc etc). Presuming this constant, life probably isn't too drastically different, and considering the messages are pretty much illustrations.. (and many species on our own planet recognize illustrations)..it's probably not too hard to believe that an alien species would be able to decipher the inscriptions.

...well..at least that's my opinion...

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"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
--Bertrand Russell

The origins of life as far as I can tell are probably universal a la the Miller Urey experiments, however evolutionary rates and pathways will most certainly be different. The possibilites of what life forms are out there are endless. I suppose if an ALF finds the probe in space, then the chances are good that the ALF is of Higher inteligence making it more likely that the probe will be understood. If the opposite is true and by chance the probe crash lands on some remote planet which is inhabited by god knows what, then it may not be understood or even noticed.

I think considering the vastness of space, the chances of anything other than an extremely highly evolved species finding it are pretty much 0.

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"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
--Bertrand Russell

I doubt anyone will catch it in space. The chance of it crashing randomly into a planet are bad-astronomical but if it does then it's probably vaporized! It may drift through interstellar space for billions of years. Will it remain recognizable or will it accrete dust and ice until it looks like yet another cometary object?

However, let's say aliens do encounter it. Will they have eyes to see it? Maybe they come from a low-visibility planet and use chemical markers or sonar to identify objects. I think we make a lot of assumptions that they will be like us.

But, if they are just like us and if they happen to catch it, then sure... they'll be able to understand it no problem

The Pioneer plaque was described in a couple of Sagan books (not too surprising).

Yes, you could imagine star-faring aliens who wouldn't be able to discern the plaque, or who couldn't discern the indentations on the plaque or who didn't know about quasars or stars or planets or hydrogen or whatnot.. Designing a plaque that could be read by any conceivable intelligent lifeform is impossible.

The relevant question should be, given a star-fairing intelligence that came across the plaque, how likely is it that they could interpret the plaque. Sagan was of the opinion that there was a good chance they'd be able to figure out everything (with the possible exception of the pictures). Sagan was also of the opinion that the plaque was much more likely to be recovered by humans and put in a museum than by aliens.

I agree.

Also agreed, assuming you mean other civilizations.

The aliens would at least probably get the general idea and understand it was artificial. One thing, though, is: Why would aliens randomly pick up this tiny probe, probably moving at great relative veloctiy to them?

Let's examine the plaque in detail. I do not think they would understand the 21-cm hydrogen line, because out methods of representing atoms would probably be different. Although they might be able to figure it out from the length of the line, which would be the same in any units. ( I mean the same equivalent length)

The pulsar scheme I have my doubts about. How would they know those are pulsars, or where those pulsars are? They might think the center of the representation represented the center of the galaxy . The simplest part to understand is the man and woman; they probably would get this easily. The solar system representation is more likely than most parts of it to be understood but it could not be certain.

The Voyager Interstellar Record is even less likely to be understood, since they would have to find the record, understand it was meant for them, and then understand the instructions on how to build a record player.

I read this short story years ago where a group of Terrans end up marooned on a planet (desert isle) for a considerable length of time. They have no equipment, and their clothing rots off their bodies and there are no local plants or animals to make new clothing. Well the long of the short is that aliens pluck them from the planet and throw them into a cage in their ship. It becomes quickly clear that the aliens think that the Terrans are just interesting beasts from the planet in which they were rescued from. The Terrans think and try of everything in which they can to demonstrate to the aliens that they are sentient. At the end of the story the aliens realise the terrans are sentient because one of the Terrans catch some type of alien analog of a rat or something and built a cage and place the rat in it. So of course the aliens figure out that the Terrans are sentient because only sentients have pets. Sooooo, back to the thread. Would it be hard for the hypothetical alien to translate the Pioneer plaque? Sure. But I bet there would be enough universal traits with which all sentients share that they would figure it out. If anyone knows of this story I would sure like to know the name of the author.

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I have grasped the bull by the tail and am lookin' 'im right in the eye.

I certainly think it would be deciphered. True it was kind of a rush job, but a lot of effort went into it nevertheless, and that was after all it's single purpose. As to why they would pick it up, think about it. Unless their civilization knows so many others that it's blase over the whole thing, I think anyone with the ability of spaceflight would be more than willing to pick up alien artifacts, even a stray hull panel off of an alien ship. Wouldn't you be?

Why would aliens not pick up something clearly artificial, and almost certainly alien? Particularly since they are almost certainly star-fairing?

I disagree. It's not like we used an H. The representation is a bit like a Bohr atom, but i don't think it's that much of an abstraction.

I also have my doubts about them. They might be able to figure out what they were, but by the time they pick up the probe the pulsars the plaque is referring to may no longer be recognizeable. I'm too lazy to do a search to see what our knowledge of pulsars was at the time the plaque was designed.

The solar system is a bit questionable, particularly Saturn. The copy of the plaque i'm looking at doesn't have enough detail to see the numbers; i'm guessing that the only numbers associated with the planets are distances from the sun. Maybe they have relative radii and relative mass (the latter would be pretty hard to convey).

A few people have asked this. What I meant to say was that I think that it would very difficult for alien civilizations to find this tiny probe whizzing by them, especially since they probably won't be looking for it. But if they actually found it, I absolutely agree they would try to get it.

I agree with daver on pretty much all he said and now see more of the merit of the 21-cm hydorgen scheme.

As a purely tongue-in-cheek suggestion, maybe we could just have a bag of Nachos or some simlilar snack food attached to our next interstellar probe, because at least the aliens would then know it was artificial, and would probably be able to:

a) extrapolate backward based on the probe's velocity and direction of orgin find out where the probe came from and when (yes, I know I am ignoring stellar encounters)

b) be able to find out we are based on left-handed amino acids from the food

c) Be able to tell we are carbon-based life forms

d) Decide we are really into unhealthy foods and so prolong our first contact by 10,000 years.

And the nice thing is that we wouldn't have refrigerate it or take any special precautions to space-proof it--junk food is essentially indesctructible. "Silly customer. You cannot hurt a Twinkie."

And as long as we're at it, i have a new suggestion as to what to beam out the next time we send a SETI test message--a live televised shot of a man playing solitaire (klondike is probably the most effective). My guess is that we'd receive a message about playing the red eight on the black nine within minutes (i suspect that solitaire suggestions are not limited by light speed or causality arguments).

One of my first thoughts about the plaque - how the aliens react when they actually see us for the first time and discover. . .

"The plaque lied to us - they wear clothing!!!"

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"As I lay beneath the Southern Cross, the stars tell more than I could" . . . David Meece

Interesting you should say that.......

I remember back when I was in eighth grade we had a worksheet asking us questions about the plaque. Now, I had known about the plaque and noticed something about the picture on the sheet: They took away the man and woman! I guess eighth graders aren't mature enough for it. I was laughing about it, and no one could figure out why. It was pretty funny. (The sheet said "This plaque is similar to a real one sent on.....)

I think, the poor guys who might try to figure out the greetings in 100+ languages on the Voyager disk will have a much harder time...
I always thought, it's not very polite to drop plenty of short sentences in many languages onto someone and hope, that he might understand... ;-)

Harald

I recall reading that Mrs. Sagan drew the two people standing next to each other without holding hands because an alien (and/or distant future human) might otherwise conceive of them as one being.
:-?

Years ago I received a replica of that plaque, and still have it on the wall. :wink:

I seem to recall a lot of editorial cartoons showing aliens coming to Earth and wanting to meet the naked blondes.

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If I remember correctly, I think the plaque may also have listed the spin rates of various pulsars. The spin rates of pulsars decrease with time at a relatively constant rate. I think that any aliens who might find the probe would also be much more advanced in their astronomy than us. Even if they discover it far in the future, they could use their knowledge of the spin rates' decline (and also pulsar spatial locations changing with time) and cross reference it with their vast knowledge of astronomy to determine the time and place when the message was sent (or rather, included on the plaque)

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Yes, it gives distances and spin rates of various pulsars. Now we know that we see a pulsar if we're in line with the emitted cone of radiation. Back when the plaque was designed, i don't know if they knew that. If not, the pulsars on the plaque would be a small fraction of all potential pulsars; there might be very little overlap between these pulsars and the pulsars the ETs know about. On the other hand, there would be millions of ETs trying to analyze the plaque, and presumably since they're star fairing they have extensive knowledge of rotating neutron stars, not just the ones that happen to be pointing at them. So, once someone got the idea that they might be pulsars it's a fairly simple computer search to match distances and frequencies.