General Question

damien's avatar

NASA has asked you to design a deep-space, alien-seeking probe. What would you put in it to sum up humanity?

Asked by damien (2399points) December 22nd, 2008

You’ve got limited space and weight allowances (it needs to fit in NASA’s quite small probe) but unlimited funds. It can be as simple or wild as you like (Don’t worry.. the government will bail them out if you spend too much). You could be friendly to the aliens with your probe contents and try to entice them to come visit us, or try to scare them away in case they’re aggressive and have domination on the mind.

The idea is that any aliens it may encounter on it’s long journey would be given some tidbits of info about the human race – who and what we are. Like the Pioneer Plaque NASA sent out, but more impressive ;)

I’d probably go for the friendly and informative option – a dictionary, a few pictures of humans (I’d use the one from the Pioneer Plaque, but fatten the people up a bit and have them scoffing some food down), a few photos of our planet, and an ipod full of music (hoping they have ears!).

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3 Answers

free's avatar

The Price is Right, Days of our lives, hahaha
Saving Private Ryan, Apollo 13, All Quiet on the Western Front
Mao’s little red book, the bible and the teachings of Buddha, toss in a little Freud and Kant, some mythology,
pics of the seven wonders,
the olympics,
oh, and of course, some good old rock and roll. (classical would probably be better:)

shrubbery's avatar

A picture of the Mona Lisa.
A David Attenborough documentary.
A Queen album.
The Star Wars movies.
Various newspapers from important days in history.
The Bible, The Qur’an, The Tipitaka, The Torah, The Vedas etc etc
Lots and lots and lots of photos of all over the world.
A Dr. Seuss book.
A Shakespeare.
The Harry Potters.
Some kind of book detailing the history of philosophy and philosophers.
A plant or seed.
A vial of blood and a lock of hair.

LostInParadise's avatar

We should show them what we truly value. I would include:

a bottle of coke
a happy meal
a pictue or model of an SUV
a designer dress
a romance novel
a vidotape of a superbowl, including commercials and halftime show
videotape of a Miss America broadcast
photographs of stretches of highway
pictures of a gated community
photographs of a typical cubicle farm

With any luck the aliens will feel that it is just not worth the effort to make any further contact with us

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