Talk:Pioneer plaque

message: "Spacecraft" is the plural and singular form. NASA doesn't use "spacecrafts."  See also here and here. Mr. Billion 18:39, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nitpick on "spacecrafts" 

message: According to this article, the length of time it will take Pioneer 10 to come within 30 astronomical units of a star is longer than the current age of the galaxy. But according to the main article for Pioneer 10, it will take 2 million years to reach Aldebaran. The galaxy is a lot more than 2 million years old, so which statement is correct, and does anyone have a good original source for this info?
:I can't give you anything definitive, but the "2 million years" clearly comes from this NASA article, "Aldebaran is about 68 light years away and it will take Pioneer over 2 million years to reach it." The age of the galaxy is believed to be somewhere between 6 and 12 billion years old. My bet would be that this article is wrong in its estimate or that NASA actually meant two billion years, which seems unlikely. A quick calculation suggests NASA's right. —HorsePunchKid→龜 20:18, July 18, 2005 (UTC)
:Actually, I think what this article is suggesting is that if Pioneer 10 were travelling in a random direction out into the galaxy from here, it would take billions of years for it to happen to come within 30 AU of a random star. Very counterfactual, since it is actually known to be heading toward Aldebaran, though maybe it won't come within 30 AU of Aldebaran. —HorsePunchKid→龜 20:22, July 18, 2005 (UTC)
  
:NASA(Ames Center) did put out a publication I will try and find a reference.pioneer 10 will come just under a light year of aldebaran a far flyby! space is mostley very very empty so an encounter with anything but dust is most unlikely(infocat13). perhaps in the next several hundred million years the chance of incountering some star systems ort cloud would be more likely.--Infocat13 22:53, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Which timeframe is correct?

message: It says the Pioneer probes left the Solar System in the 1980s. In actual fact niether probe has yet done so. The only human built spacecraft currently beyond the solar system is Voyager 1. User:Tom walker 19 January 2006
What is the definition of the end of the Solar System? Does it have something to do with detectable particles from the Sun? If so, then the resolution of the detector is the factor. And, of course photons from the Sun would be detectable across the galaxy. Is it based upon some arbitrary distance from the Sun? Wouldn't the radiation of all types from different solar systems really just blend together, for example, Proxima's and our own? Jimaginator 21:06, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Voyager article states "As of 2006, the Voyager spacecraft will be the third and fourth human artifacts to escape entirely from the solar system. Pioneers 10 and 11, which were launched in 1972 and 1973 and preceded Voyager in outstripping the gravitational attraction of the Sun". It suggests in this article that gravitational attraction is the measure of being in the solar system. This seems a sensible measure to me and something readily understandable to the layperson. Suggest use of this measure in both articles. - PocklingtonDan 09:28, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

text: It doesn't really mean anything, though, since everything in the universe is gravitationally attracted to the Sun. There's no point where it drops to zero. Harksaw 21:16, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The phrasing "outstripping the gravitational attraction of the Sun" is meant to signify that these artifacts are the only ones created by man which are not gravitationally bound to the Sun: i.e., they are in a hyperbolic orbit, and will never return to the Sun's vicinity.  This is not a sensible measure for "leaving the solar system", since they had the necessary velocity immediately after leaving the vicinity of Saturn (or perhaps Jupiter). (The unfortunate phrasing originally derived from NASA's page about Voyager. --Rpresser 22:08, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Not Left Yet

message: One point. Is the hydrogen atom critical to the "understanding" of this plaque, because if it is, it's on the corner and so could easily get broken off in space. Hhhm, maybe I'm just imaginary an alien civilisation wondering what the hell is it, and looking at a plaque with a torn-off hydrogen atom... :P
It's not quite on the corner. Other symbols go higher and further to the left than it. Anyway, it's probably not going to break off if NASA expects it to outlast our sun and earth. Brianjd 14:12, 2005 Jan 29 (UTC)
Lol, it would be hilarious. They only expect it to out last the sun and earth because of it's trjectory. An alien race involved in an intergalatic war could spot it next week and blow it into smitherins tearing the space-time continume which consumes the universe destroying Earth only mintues after destroying the probe :O wolfie 08:20, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Could the corner break off?

message: Should this very large PNG image be replaced by an SVG? I have used Inkscape to do the tracing and it came out rather well. Rpresser 20:38, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you considered my 75 KB 1600x1200 PNG version to be "very large", then why did you replace it with your 209 KB 1600x1200 SVG version? I reverted the image back to the PNG version since it seems that when you did the conversion, detail was lost. Feel free replace it with the SVG version if you upload an SVG version without any loss of detail. — 08:54, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh shit. While trying to investigate what you said, I think I further screwed up the PNG file by reverting it to Godm0de's version.  I'm recusing myself from any further image work, ever. Please accept my humble apologies and fix your file. Rpresser 15:24, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

text: OK, I un-reverted my revert; the 75K version is now active. My installation of Firefox acts weird with it though, when I view the :Image page, it is blank. I won't do anything else though. Rpresser 15:37, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Very large PNG image

message: :I see in the earlier discussions here about the issues of Sexism and Racism that they have either been removed or were never in the article, this is quite stupid. It is a well-known fact that many feminists at the time (and perhaps still now) accused the Plaque of being Sexist for having the Man doing the greeting and the Woman simply standing there submissively. This has to be mentioned in the article, it is well documented.
:Secondly again it is know that certain accusations were levelled against the plaque for apparently showing the Humans as White people. Whether they are or not I don't know, but I do know the accusation has been made, and this must also been in the article.
:--Hibernian 03:56, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I added paragraphs in the criticism section that discuss the accusations of racism and sexism surrounding the depiction of the figures of the finished engraving.--Ephert (talk) 11:47, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Important things not included in the article 

message: Oh great, now with the redefinition of what a planet is, eliminating Pluto as a planet and leaving us with 8 planets, we're gonna have to get that plaque back and etch Pluto off there.  After all, we don't want the aliens to think that we humans at one point actually considered Pluto a planet!  Or, worse yet, they'll think the plaque came from another solar system just like ours, but with 9 clearly defined planets, and give the people from planet #3 the credit for creating that plaque that humanity so rightly deserves!  I hope NASA is mounting a recovery mission as we speak!--Canuckguy 21:26, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I seriously do not think that any alien lifeform that looks at the plaque (they may simply see an object with nothing on it, who knows) would care about any racial, religious, or cultural differences in which we seem to place a lot of value. They may not even be able to tell a man from a woman, not to mention two people of different racial groups (we could be just blobs of heat to them or sound echoes without definite shapes). Chronolegion 12:26, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Regarding "make the female greet", they did.  Image #52 on the Voyager Golden Record shows ETs we all believe the theory of evolution (wrong) with simpler lifeforms at the bottom and a man/woman at the top.  The man and woman are the same couple as are on the Pioneer Plaque, and the woman is waving instead of the man.  In "Murmurs of Earth" (Sagan et al, 1978, page 100) Jon Lomberg says "In the interest of fairness, we show the couple again, and this time it is the woman whose arm is raised in cosmic greeting."  (Rick314 18:04, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plaque recall? 

message: Shouldn't the featured picture (the actual plaque, not the illustration) be the main picture? --MosheA 01:41, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Featured Picture? 

message: The sentence above is a bit ambigious. I'm not sure whether the sentence is saying it will never reach another planet before the galaxy dies or that it will, but it will take a long time. Also what is the talk of "mean time". Is its path not known? Is it not known which star it will reach first? If not, why? As a lay reader, this makes no sense. It should be changed to something like (obviously changed by someone with subject knowledge) "The spacecraft has been travelling for 20 years. Although it is not known which star it will first meet (due to galactic rotation) the mean time of travel for the spacecraft to come within 30 astronomical units of a star is 330,000,000 years. This is longer than the current age of the galaxy. The galaxy would be dead/very old/still young at this point". Thanks - PocklingtonDan 09:17, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Additionally, the article on Voyager states that "The Voyager spacecraft will take about 40,000 years to come near another star", definiing near as 1.7 light years. 1.7 light years and 30 AU are vastly different scale distances, why is one used in one article and another in the next. Someone should standardise the comparison across these two articles. Near should be defined as "readily detectable with telescope by an advanced civilisation" or similar, since passing near by to an inhabited system but with no alien detecting it is of no worth at all. - PocklingtonDan 09:26, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

text: The chance it will be found by another civilisation is zero, because it will be destroyed by high-energy cosmic radiation long before. 80.138.239.58 (talk) 08:08, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  "The mean time for the spacecraft to come within 30 astronomical units of a star is longer than the current age of our galaxy." 

message: :File:Shlomo-Artzi-Moon.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.
Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a non-free use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.
If there is  other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page.  Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.
-Andrew c [talk] 14:34, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Fair use rationale for File:Shlomo-Artzi-Moon.jpg

message: It's ridiculous how the NASA used a so posh hairstyle with the guy's picture. The woman looks more universal, less ethnocentric.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.180.147.32 (talk) 16:44, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hairstyle 

message: I tried to find a reference for this "conference in Crimea", without success. There was, however, a conference on "Communication with extraterrestrial intelligence" in September 1971 which was held in Yerevan, Armenia, for which Sagan edited the proceedings and contributed a number of talks. I suspect that this is the conference that is refered to in the history section, not one "in" Crimea. --Wrongfilter (talk) 17:57, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Crimea? Armenia! 

message: Is the trajectory of both craft similar enough so one plaque is identical to the other, or is there a slight difference in the plaques? 206.8.2.246 (talk) 01:38, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trajectory? 

message: Er, did Sagan or anyone at NASA consider what the consequences might be if the finders of such material weren't upholding Gene Roddenberry's vision of galactic goodwill? I mean if Earth's own natural environments are anything to go by, I can only conclude there is no reason not to assume that nature in space is pretty much different. Things evolve to either prey on other things or to avoid being the prey of other things. What happens if this plaque falls into the "wrong hands"? We are after all made out of the same fleshy substance that makes cows and pigs so damn tasty! This article concerns itself with all the wonderful nuances and inner charm this plaque might bring to an alien species but were any dangers also factored into these discussions?
::Of course they didn't!! But it makes a good point I never thought about it before but including us on the discs could be used as a map/menu by any lifeform that had little or no compassion/understanding for the human species. Our world is certainly a dog-eat-dog place so it does beg the question what would happen if ET turned out to be meat-hungry monster?109.158.254.162 (talk) 19:45, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: You are greatly underestimating how long it would take the voyager to reach alien civilization. By that point humanity is likely to be A) Extinct or B) So technologically advanced that we could catch up to the voyager and bring it back to Earth for safekeeping in a museum.202.73.1.98 (talk) 03:27, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  First Contact??? 

message: This might seem like a stupid question (since I'm not good at maths and codes) but the most important thing I don't understand about the used binary code is this: I know from the wikipedia entry that 0 is expressed as - , 1 as I and that 8 is for example expressed as I---; But apart from whole numbers, how are decimals or powers expressed? I guess they have to be used because else large numbers would have a very long code, right? 
Apart from that I'm not even really sure how whole numbers work out; For example: is - , I , I- , II , I-- = 0 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ? What then are 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 expressed like; respectively: what (if anything) do I- and -I represent?
I guess since most people don't know that stuff any better, it might actually be very informative to add a short section on how exactly that encoding system works out in practice! This is the single most important issue on how to improve this otherwise very good entry that is apparent to me.
Plus: If anybody would be so nice to do that, please don't forget to add the same in the entry on the Voyager Plaque (which uses the same code)!
83.76.133.106 (talk) 21:11, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Binary Code 

message: I believe that there is a small error in the distance of Uranus as indicated on the plaque:
Uranus: 111101111 binary = 495 decimal * 0,4 AU * 0,1 = 19,8 AU, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_system#Outer_planets states that the distance of Uranus is 19.6 AU, which should give a value of about 510 decimal = 111111110.
The other distances check out nicely.
Supermagle (talk) 12:10, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Nineplanets.org gives a mean AU of 19.2 for Uranus, but it's not clear from the article whether the relative distances are mean distances, maximum distances, or the distances when the plaque was designed (19.8 AU is close to Uranus' maximum distance from the sun). Quickly checking the figures for Saturn suggests that the plaque lists the maximum AU rather than the mean AU, but I'm not an expert. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 17:04, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Error in distance of Uranus? 

message: I was on the BBC site which has an incredibly easy to understand take on this plaque - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11798317. IMHO this is very easy to understand when compared to the current wiki article (although granted the article gives much more detail into elements making up the maths of the message). Would be grand if the article could adopt a similar point-by-point description. Just a thought. And before some clever dick says "Why don't you do it, then" this isn't my area of expertise, hence posting here for others to feedback. Londonclanger (talk) 13:56, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: To be honest I'm not sure the way it is represented in that BBC article is any clearer than on Wikipedia, just (as you note) less detailed.  I strongly favour keeping the current detailed descriptions but a short summary at the beginning of the symbolism section couldn't hurt I suppose. ChiZeroOne (talk) 23:40, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Simplifying the message 

message: *Pluto was considered to be a planet when the plaque was designed; in 2006 the IAU reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet and then in 2008 as a plutoid. Other large bodies classed as dwarf planets, such as Sedna, are not depicted, as they were unknown at the time the plaque was made.
*this appears in this article and in other similar articles like the Arrecibo message. It sounds really stupid. Just think you are an alien and you know the Solar System... What matters to you if a bunch of lunatic astronomers think Pluto is a dwarf planet or not? it is just a definition and worse it is mostly irrelevant. The issue with these messages, is that they added Pluto but not Eris or other similar-sized worlds in the Kuiper belt. The reasons are they did not knew those worlds existed out there back then. If Astronomers call it dwarf planet or not it is irrelevant for the article. -Pedro (talk) 18:49, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  the Stupid Pluto planet vs dwarf planet thing

message: I read the source cited that both pioneer 10 and 11 carry the plaque, it only refers to pioneer 10 carrying it.
Should this be corrected? does someone have a source otherwise?
Isador1500 (talk) 23:44, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plaque on both spacecraft? 

message: In the subsection Figures of a man and a woman it says "the binary representation of the number 8 can be seen (1000, with a small defect in the first zero)". Is this defect intentional? If not, is there an explanation as to how it got there and why it wasn't corrected? And is it on both the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 plaques? I cannot find any information about this defect and it seems a rather important issue. Lexicon (talk) 17:28, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: User:Astroschmidt in https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pioneer_plaque&diff=prev&oldid=1058038032 added an explanation. I added footnotes to the extent I could. Now I wonder if we should fix the SVG so the error stops propagating. Artoria2e5 🌉 13:16, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  The "small defect"