Noah's dove

In 1972, the Pioneer 10 spacecraft was launched to the edge of the universe, on board it carries a small aluminum disc on which is drawn a message from the human race to any intelligent life form that may encounter the spacecraft. How do you compress the story of the human race into a piece of aluminum the size of which does not exceed that of an A4 sheet of paper?

Dodi Goldman, "Odysseus"

In March 1972, NASA personnel buried a gold-coated aluminum disc in the Pioneer 10 spacecraft and launched it into space. Almost a year later, in April 1973, an identical disc was released on "Pioneer 11." Pioneer 10 has long been at the furthest point in space reached by the human race. In two million years it should reach the star Aldebaran, "the eye of the Taurus constellation". Due to the distance, contact with the spacecraft was lost. Pioneer 11 was sent to the opposite end of the solar system. I also lost contact with her.

Everything that is sublime in a person is embodied in this disk, on its modest dimensions (its width is less than 23 cm and its height is 15.2 cm). Of all the huge variety of species living on Earth - found in our solar system, which is one of hundreds of millions of solar systems - Homo sapiens is the only creature characterized by constant improvement of its living environment. In building better and more accurate tools, in eradicating diseases, in extending his life span, in predicting the future, but above all - what sets man apart is curiosity and the attempt to explore and understand the environment in which he exists.

Thousands of years of human curiosity, effort and desire to understand the universe and to find an intelligent creature similar to us somewhere in space, shrunk into this letter. which touches the heart with the intensity of its longing. Ever since the first man raised his eyes in wonder to the sky, and saw that countless shining stars sparkled in them, the long journey to find life in the universe began.

is there anyone there

The Greek philosopher and astronomer Thales, Ptolemy of Alexandria, the Roman poet Lucretius, the people of the Renaissance including Copernicus, Galileo and Giordano Bruno, followed by Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton - all raised their eyes to the sky, to decipher the great secret of the universe. The more a new layer is added to the decipherment, the more the question is asked again and again: are we alone in the world?

The roots of understanding the universe are rooted, it is clear to us today, in the question of "creation" or the starting point. If everything started from one point, the "big bang", from which a universe was created that continued to expand, and if at some point in time in this process life was created on earth, is it likely that it was created in only one place? The scientists' answers to the question are not unequivocal. Some say that it is statistically impossible for life to exist on only one planet, out of every trillion trillion (7 times 10 to the 22nd power) of the stars. Others claim that until signs of life are found on another planet - we, humans, will remain an unprecedented phenomenon. A one time miracle.

In this uncertainty, moving between great fear and deep human hope, the two discs sail. They are now at the edge of our solar system and will continue to move away unless some intelligent creature manages to capture them and observe the innocent drawings on their backs. An intelligent being, whose level of development is similar to ours, should be able to read and even understand the human message that man sent to his neighbors in space. This is why the messages on the disk are written as symbols, whose communicative coefficient is the widest known to us: painting and science.

On the right side, in the upper part of the painting, a human female is depicted. Beside her stands the male. These are Adam and Eve as we imagine them in Hibram: naked of clothing, innocent of sophistication and hidden motives, without ornaments that might distract from their essence. The male raises his hand in a gesture of greeting and the stance of the two is neutral, non-aggressive, inviting contact.

In the upper left corner are drawn two states of a hydrogen atom, in which a certain physical chemical phenomenon occurs once every ten million years. An intelligent culture should recognize this phenomenon. In the circular drawing on the left, 15 lines are visible coming out of the same source. Binary numbers are written on 14 of them, which represent the cycle times of a pulsar (a dense neutron star) and with which it is possible to calculate the time when the spacecraft carrying the message was launched, and also to locate the position of our solar system. The line, which appears longer, marks the distance from our Sun to the center of the Milky Way galaxy. On the bottom side of the disc is a diagram of the solar system, and on it is drawn the path of Pioneer 10. The binary numbers next to the planets show the average distance of the planet from the sun.

We carry a message of peace

The disc - designed by the late astronomer and popular science writer Carl Sagan, the artist Linda Salzman-Sagan and the astronomer Frank Drake - is a sympathetic greeting card, which conveys basic information about the human race and the planet, and invites a meeting of peace. It is not the only transmission that we send from here to the "outside" and since it was sent, man has also increased his efforts: hundreds of relay stations have been listening to space for years and trying to receive a signal from outer space in response. In the SETI project, for example, which scans transmissions using radio-telescope devices in an attempt to discover signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, tens of millions of personal computer owners around the world take part, donating their computing power to the cause.

The Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft also sent sound CDs describing the human race and the Earth, and even included operating instructions in a binary language (a language of two digits and their combinations, as opposed to the decimal, decimal system used in Europe and Israel). Both spacecraft have left our solar system, and one of them is photographing Saturn's rings.

As a joyful and hopeful child, standing at night and looking at the glittering sky above, we therefore insist on asking for an answer in space. But the future of the globe we live in is far from certain, and our future, the members of the human race, is even less certain. The journey into space is not from human gluttony. It also expresses the attempt to predict the future and create new conditions for our survival. It is not in vain that we are increasing our efforts now, since in the third millennium we are supposed to leave the "cave" to meet the outside world. When we leave, we will finally know if the shadow figures we saw on the walls of the cave, when we sat in it, are real figures, or if they are only the creations of our imaginations and desires.

Like Noah, who floated in an isolated ark after the flood, and sent a dove through the hatch to see if the water had run out, modern man created his own message of peace. The dove returned to the ark with an olive branch in its mouth, a sign of renewed life and of reaching new shores that the inhabitants of the ark would witness and build their future on. Our postcard, its senders also knew when they buried it in its place, will not return in the foreseeable future. Because this is so, more than it transmits a life signal from man to his mysterious neighbors, it sends an internal signal, from us to ourselves: we must build the future, she says; We must ensure that humanity continues to exist, that it continues to explore the universe with the curiosity of a child, that it does not stop looking for and building a better tomorrow.