Sending a picture by sound
On 16th November 1974 a radio message was sent from Earth to Space by the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. It contained a series of warbling tones, at a frequency too high to be audible to our ears, but the sound transmitted a picture that could be decoded by anyone (or anything) with a radio receiver.
This page has some classroom activities that looks at the message from a computer science (mostly) perspective. We hope you enjoy them.
The message was sent to a star cluster many light years from Earth (the message still hasn’t reached its destination!) and contains information that other intelligent lifeforms would be able to decode to find out a little about the planet which sent it (Earth!). Sending the message was more about demonstrating the incredible transmitting power of the telescope (which had recently had an upgrade) than about expecting alien beings to receive our message and respond.
1. Classroom activities
Click here for the Classroom activities page.
2. Teachers’ material
Supporting some of the activities in (1) with additional teacher’s material.
3. Sound files
Click here for the Sound files page. See if you can start to decode part of the Arecibo Message by listening to a short audio clip.
4. Data files
Click here for the data files page.
The Arecibo Message pages
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