Arecibo Message – data files

Worksheets

The Google and Excel sheets are basically the same file (just using different platforms). They contain conditional formatting presets so that when you paste in the content from the data files a colour change automatically happens and the Arecibo Message is displayed either in black and white or in colour.

The Google Sheet has both a black and white tab as well as a colour tab (use the black and white data file for the black and white tab, and the colour one for the colour tab). There are two Excel files, one for B&W, one for colour – as for the Google sheet the right data file needs to be used to get the best effect.

  • Google Sheets document – use text files 03 (B/W) and 04 (colour) in the relevant tabs. The file itself is view only so you will need to make a copy to edit it; this requires a Google account.
  • Excel – black and white – use text file 03
  • Excel – colour – use text file 04

Data files

01 and 02 are copies of the plain text “0”s and “1”s version of the message. If you’re using the Google Sheets version to play around with the message please use files 03 and 04 below.

01 & 02 – Plain text files

01 – The 1,679 bits of the Arecibo Message as a binary text-file (a string of 1s and 0s). [download file, or scroll down and copy and paste text further down this page]

02 – The 1,679 bits of the Arecibo Message as a binary text file in columns. Seeing the data in columns does make the image slightly clearer [download file]

03 & 04 – plain text files for Google Sheets

The YouTube video above shows the colour version using the same data as in file 04.

The two files below are the ones to use with this Google Sheet (you’ll need to make a copy of the sheet so that you can edit it, use File > Make a copy). There are instructions in the Google Sheet or you can print a PDF copy.

03 – “Black and White” – the 1,679 bits of the Arecibo Message as a binary text file (1s and 0s) in separated columns (‘tab separated variables’). [download file]

04 – “Colour” – the 1,679 bits of the Arecibo Message as a text file (with colour information added) in separated columns (‘tab separated variables’). [download file]

This isn’t a binary file in the strictest sense because it’s not just 1s and 0s. Some of the 1s have been replaced with 2s / 3s etc, to be a ‘colour-by-numbers’ file.

05 – Arecibo comma separated values file (black and white). This is an HTML web page. You’ll need to copy all the digits and save as a text file before you can use it.

06 – Arecibo comma separated values file (colour) – coming soon.

07 – Emoji black and white squares for Arecibo worksheets. (Save the file, don’t open it in the browser).

08 – Emoji coloured images for Arecibo worksheets – coming soon

The full 1,769 bit Arecibo Message is also below

00000010101010000000000001010000010100000001001000100010001001011001010101010101010100100100000000000000000000000000000000000001100000000000000000001101000000000000000000011010000000000000000001010100000000000000000011111000000000000000000000000000000001100001110001100001100010000000000000110010000110100011000110000110101111101111101111101111100000000000000000000000000100000000000000000100000000000000000000000000001000000000000000001111110000000000000111110000000000000000000000011000011000011100011000100000001000000000100001101000011000111001101011111011111011111011111000000000000000000000000001000000110000000001000000000001100000000000000010000011000000000011111100000110000001111100000000001100000000000001000000001000000001000001000000110000000100000001100001100000010000000000110001000011000000000000000110011000000000000011000100001100000000011000011000000100000001000000100000000100000100000001100000000100010000000011000000001000100000000010000000100000100000001000000010000000100000000000011000000000110000000011000000000100011101011000000000001000000010000000000000010000011111000000000000100001011101001011011000000100111001001111111011100001110000011011100000000010100000111011001000000101000001111110010000001010000011000000100000110110000000000000000000000000000000000011100000100000000000000111010100010101010101001110000000001010101000000000000000010100000000000000111110000000000000000111111111000000000000111000000011100000000011000000000001100000001101000000000101100000110011000000011001100001000101000001010001000010001001000100100010000000010001010001000000000000100001000010000000000001000000000100000000000000100101000000000001111001111101001111000

The Arecibo Message pages

Supported by Queen Mary University of London’s Centre for Public Engagement.

Admin only: Edit this page