Space Sending postcards for aliens.doc

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1、Space: Sending postcards for aliensOur space correspondent contemplates the latest effort to preserve humanitys long-term legacy by sending images into space.In a billion years time, what will be left of human civilisation?The pyramids will have long ago crumbled to dust and our technology rusted to

2、 nothing. Perhaps we will have found a new life among the stars or reached a higher state of virtual civilisation especially if the recently announced plans to send a couple to Mars by 2018 come to pass. Maybe Morlocks or apes will rule the planet. The Earth might be a wasteland destroyed through co

3、nflict, environmental catastrophe or the failure to spot an asteroid before it blasts us to oblivion.But not to worry. Whatever happens to us, something of our legacy will remain if not on Earth then in space. Around 36, 000 km (22, 000 miles) above the planet, the long-dead Echostar XVI satellite w

4、ill continue to orbit, a memorial to humanity. On board, a 12cm-(5 inch-) diameter disc embossed with one hundred pictures representing our civilisation images of human endeavour, innovation, culture and cruelty; pictures of the natural world and the changes we have brought to it. Or as the artist b

5、ehind the project, Trevor Paglen, puts it: “A collection of images that will haunt the Earth.”The Echostar XVI communications satellite was launched in November last year and is designed to remain operational for around 15 years, beaming TV pictures to and from the United States. It is effectively l

6、ocked in place, in a fixed position, above Earth its geostationary orbit means that it spins at the same speed that the planet rotates. As with other geostationary spacecraft, its height makes it immune to the drag of the atmosphere. So unlike satellites at lower or higher altitudes, which eventuall

7、y drift away or plummet to Earth, Echostar XVI will keep its position until it becomes consumed by the Sun.Paglen spent five years trawling through tens of thousands of images from human history, and talked to artists, scientists, philosophers and campaigners, to select one hundred images that would

8、 form The Last Pictures project on board the spacecraft. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) etched the pictures into an atomically stable wafer of silicon, which was mounted to a golden disc, and then attached to the body of the satellite.The selected pictures now orbiting

9、 above us range from early human cave art to the Earthrise picture captured by the Apollo 8 astronauts during their mission to the Moon. They also include the Great Wall of China, a steam train and an atom bomb explosion. There are also images of soldiers wearing First World War gas masks, caged hen

10、s in a battery chicken farm and the tiered benches and bloodstained table of an empty Victorian operating theatre; images where you only need a little imagination to picture pain and suffering. But there is also humour. In a lovely knowing twist, one of the images is a backstage still taken from the

11、 movie Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.“The images in the Last Pictures are primarily inspired by thinking of uncertainty about the future, ” explains Paglen, “trying to think through the ways in which humans have produced crises over and over, whether thats humanitarian crises or ecological cris

12、es and thinking about our uncertain relationship with ideas about progress.”Snapshots of historyVisions of humanity have travelled further in space, of course. The early 1970s Pioneer 10 and 11 missions to Jupiter and Saturn both carried a plaque on the side with a line drawing of a naked man and wo

13、man. The mans hand is raised in greeting and beneath it there is a diagram of the Solar System, illustrating the origin of the spacecraft. The two Voyager probes both still going strong after 35 years carry a far more ambitious message from Earth into interstellar space, including audio messages etc

14、hed into golden records with instructions about how to play them. Any extra-terrestrial being that succeeds in doing so would not only be treated to the sounds of surf, thunder, whale calls and greetings in 55 languages, they would also hear music from Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky, as well as Johnny

15、B Goode by Chuck Berry.The Pioneer and Voyager messages were high-minded attempts to communicate with other civilisations, to let them know we are here. Postcards for aliens, if you like. But Paglen says that the Last Pictures project is very different. “The Voyager team were very sincere about how

16、to explain life on Earth to extra-terrestrials. This is not like that at all, were not going to the final frontier or anything like that.” In fact he does not imagine that his work will find an audience. “I dont think it will ever be found, ” he says.In that case, why do it? “I really started thinki

17、ng about how we develop an ethical relationship with the future, ” Paglen explains. “Even though we cannot imagine geologic time, or even evolutionary time, or barely think about tomorrow, we can intervene in it. And thats new.”“If you look at things like nuclear waste or climate change or geostatio

18、nary spacecraft, we have set things off into geologic time or cosmic time almost by accident.” In other words, as humans, we have already altered the very far future. The future beyond the lifespan of humanity.So if we were all wiped out tomorrow, what would we leave behind? Weve made our mark on Ea

19、rth, and 20, 000 years after our ancestors created bison paintings in caves, we are now leaving snapshots of our memories in space, there for future generations of anyone or anything to stumble upon. Now there are plaques on spacecraft at the edge of the Solar System, expired landers on Mars, spacec

20、raft in orbit around Saturn, Venus and Mercury and even a probe on Saturns moon Titan. We have left rovers, flags and footsteps on the Moon, satellites in orbit and now one hundred pictures.Its a sobering thought, though, that eventually, even those will be gone swallowed up when the Sun becomes a red giant in five billion years, or scattered to dust when our galaxy collides with another in four billion; fragmented into nothingness as the Universe expands into infinite darkness.