Arecibo – What a Dish!

The Arecibo observatory is a very large radio telescope located in Puerto Rico.  In 1974, astronomers used it to broadcast a message into outer space intended to demonstrate human intelligence.  Why are we so interested in finding intelligence in the stars, and yet so deaf to the many species who manifest it here on Earth?

The Arecibo observatory‘s 305-metre (1,000-foot) radio telescope is used in three major areas of research: radio astronomy, radar astronomy and atmospheric science.  Scientists who want to use the telescope can submit research proposals that are evaluated by an independent scientific board.

From its construction in the 1960s until 2011, the observatory was managed by Cornell University.

At the time of its completion in 1963, Arecibo was the largest single-aperture telescope on Earth.  It remained so until recently, in July 2016.

The observatory gained more recognition in 1999, when it began collecting data for the SETI@home project.

 

An Ear to the Universe

Arecibo is both a radio receiver and a radio transmitter. It is an ear for listening, and a mouth for speaking. The dish surface is made of 38,778 perforated aluminium panels, each one about 1 by 2 m (3 by 6 feet), supported by a mesh of steel cables.  

Radio waves consists of electromagnetic waves that are sent through the atmosphere.

Radio transmitters and receivers can be tuned to broadcast or receive radio waves at precise frequencies.

The observatory has four radar transmitters, with effective isotropic radiated powers of

Arecibo’s reflector is a spherical reflector.  To aim the device, the receiver is moved to intercept signals reflected from different directions by the spherical dish surface of 270 m (870 ft) radius.

The receiver is on a 900-ton platform suspended 150 m (492 ft) above the dish by 18 cables running from three reinforced concrete towers, one 111 m (365 ft) high and the other two 81 m (265 ft) high, placing their tops at the same elevation.  The platform has a rotating, bow-shaped track 93 m (305 ft) long, called the azimuth arm, carrying the receiving antennas and secondary and tertiary reflectors.  This allows the telescope to observe any region of the sky in a forty-degree cone of visibility about the local zenith (between −1 and 38 degrees of declination).

Puerto Rico’s location near the Northern Tropic allows the Arecibo telescope to view the planets in the Solar System over the Northern half of their orbit.

You cannot see radio waves or hear them, but radio receivers can pick them up and convert them to sounds, images, or data.

In 1974, we humans sent a message – an interstellar communiqué, if you will – aimed at Messier 13, a globular cluster of stars, about 21,000 light-years away.

Its content was determined by astrophysicist and Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) founder Frank Drake, and visionary Carl Sagan.

Within the limits of our existing technology, any practical search for distant intelligent life must necessarily be a search for some manifestation of a distant technology.  After about 50 years, the Drake equation is still of seminal importance because it is a ‘road map‘ of what we need to learn in order to solve this fundamental existential question.

The Message: An Interstellar Communiqué

The most powerful broadcast ever deliberately beamed into space was made from Puerto Rico in 1974, as part of the ceremonies held to mark a major upgrade to the Arecibo radio telescope.

The radio transmission consisted of a simple, pictorial message, aimed at our putative cosmic companions in the globular star cluster Messier 13 (M13) – the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules.  This stellar cluster contains approximately a third of a million stars, and its centre of its core is located roughly 25,000 light-years from Earth, near the outer edge of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

The Arecibo message is a digital encoding of an astronomical and biological description of the Earth and its lifeforms.  The radio transmission lasted less than three minutes.

The broadcasted message used a string of 1,679 binary digits.  It contained approximately 210 bytes of data, transmitted at a frequency of 2,380 MHz, and modulated by shifting the frequency by 10 Hz, with a power of 1,000 kW.

The idea behind it was that the alien civilisation who would receive the message could recognise 1,679 as a semi-prime number and multiple of 23 and 73.  When the ones and zeroes of the binary-coded message are put into grid form, the result is a pixelated summary of humanity.

It contains several parts:

Since it will take nearly 25,000 years to reach its intended destination, the Arecibo message is viewed as a demonstration of human technological achievement, as opposed to a real attempt to enter into a conversation with extraterrestrials. 

Obviously, the core of the star cluster, to which the message was aimed, will have moved through space during the transit time, and it will no longer be in the same location by the time the message arrives.  However, the proper motion of M13 is small enough that the cluster will only move 24 light years, only a small fraction of the diameter of the whole cluster.

The Great Silence

The idea that we represent the only intelligence in the Universe seems preposterous.  However, despite the increasing range of our extraterrestrial search, we have found only silence.

In 1950, physicist Enrico Fermi argued that, given a number of assumptions, the Earth should already have been visited by aliens.

Fermi noted the probability of Earth-like planets existing somewhere in the Universe, and the probability of life having arisen on them, the likelihood for intelligent societies to have developed sophisticated technology and  the capability for interstellar travel, and their duration span.

Eventually, he concluded from these possibilities that we ought to have been visited long ago, and many times over, by extraterrestrial species.  However, as he noted no convincing evidence for this, Fermi was lead to ask: “Where is everybody?”

This is the great silence.

So what if instead of searching for intelligent life forms in far away galaxies, we simply began to listen to the World around us…?

 

Taxonomy of Life: Us and Them

The way we think about animals is fundamental to how we understand ourselves and our place in the World.

The idea of a “natural order” in the living world has become embedded in our society.

The differences and similarities we perceive between human and non-human animals have been the subject of enquiry since the ancient Greek philosophers.  The notion of a hierarchical structure was later reinforced by religious scriptures with a divine explanation.

But it was not until the 18th century that we began to seek scientific explanation.

Taxonomy – the naming, describing and classifying of organisms – proposed a system for objectively ordering and ranking the animal kingdom.  Today, its legacy underpins almost every aspect of our daily lives.

One of the first scientific attempts to record, describe and rank the animal kingdom was made by Swedish physician and botanist Carl Linnaeus, in his 1735 publication Systema Naturae.  For the first time, humans were classed as animals.

Linnaeus described our species with the words Nosce te ipsum, reasoning that our very ability to recognise ourselves as human was essentially what set us apart from non-human animals.  He devised the first standardised two-part naming system for all lifeforms, which has been in use ever since.

 

Wildlife documentaries, natural history museums and zoos create representations of Nature that frame our ideas about animals.  Whether through carefully edited film footage, realistic displays of preserved specimens or the dramatic staging of living animals, they arrange the natural world.

What we see, and how we encounter it, has a significant effect on our behaviour towards animals.  With the rapid loss of habitats and species threatening the health of our planet, the historical roots of our beliefs about animals are now coming under closer scrutiny.

Is the separation of humans from other animals, both in our minds and our environments, compatible with creating a sustainable World?

Darwin’s writings On The Origin of Species persuaded the World that the difference between different species of animals and plants is not in fact the fixed immutable difference that it appears to be.

The doctrine of natural kinds, which had rendered classification easy and definite, which was enshrined in the Aristotelian tradition and protected by its supposed necessity for orthodox dogma, was suddenly swept away forever out of the biological world.

The difference between man and the lower animals, which to our conceited human minds appears enormous, was shown to be a gradual achievement involving intermediate being who could not with any certainty be placed either within or without the human species – the mere process of genetic evolution.

From that moment on, old familiar landmarks became wavering and indistinct.  Sharp outlines felt increasingly blurred.  Things and species lost their boundaries.  No one could say for certain where they began or ended.

And more importantly, why do we demand that, as proof of intelligence, non-human animals communicate to us in human language, only to dismiss the creatures that actually do so?

Humans and Parrots

Humans have lived alongside parrots for thousands of years, and only recently have they considered the possibility that parrots might be intelligent.

For 30 years, Dr Irene Pepperberg studied Alex, an African grey parrot.  Before Pepperberg worked with Alex, it was widely believed by scientists that a large primate brain was needed to handle complex and abstract problems related to language and understanding.

Birds were not considered intelligent, as their only perceived use of communication involved mimicking and repeating sounds in their interactions.

However, this idea was overturned.  Alex’s accomplishments were such that they supported the idea that birds may be able to reason on a basic level and use words creatively.  Alex’s intelligence was put on a par to that of dolphins and great apes.

Prof. Pepperberg reported that Alex appeared to show the intelligence of a five-year-old human child, and that he was yet to reach his full potential by the time he died.  She also believed that the bird possessed the emotional level of a human two-year-old.

Smart Alex

Listing Alex’s accomplishments in 1999, Irene Pepperberg said he could identify 50 objects and recognise quantities up to six.  Alex the parrot could distinguish seven colours and five shapes, and understand a variety of concepts such as:

Alex had a vocabulary of over 100 words, and he appeared to have an understanding of what he said.

When he was tired of being tested, Alex would say “Wanna go back“, meaning that he wanted to go back to his cage.  Although he was not trained to say where he wanted to go, he seemingly picked it up from being asked where he would like to be taken.

Alex had even worked out for himself that saying “I’m sorry…” is associated with defusing a tense, angry and potentially dangerous moment.

In July 2005, Pepperberg reported that Alex understood the concept of nothing or zero.

A year later, she discovered that Alex’s perception of optical illusions was similar to that of human perception.

Alex died in 2007, aged 31.  His last words were:

“You be good.  I love you.”

Parrots are vocal learners.  Human beings are too.

I speak, therefore I am.

 

Sometimes it is hard to make sense of a behaviour that is so different from our own.  As human beings, we think parrots are mindlessly mimicking our words.  Perhaps parrots think human beings are not very bright at all…

While we go to great technological lengths to seek intelligent life throughout the Universe, perhaps we should not forget to look much closer to home.  Why aren’t we more interested in listening to the voices of our fellow creatures?

We must observe.  We must also listen.