January 9, 2001
The universe does not repeat itself. Every sunrise is unique, every snowflake singular, and every birthday yours alone.
A Cosmic Call to Nearby Stars
Birthday · January 9, 2001
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
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APOD published January 9, 2001. Credit: Yuvan Dutil & Stephane Dumas. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
If you could send a message to an alien civilization, what would you say? The people from the Cosmic Call project sent the above image as the first page of a longer message. The message was broadcast toward local stars by radio telescope during the summer of 1999. The single-dish, 70 meter diameter telescope is located in Ukraine on the Crimean peninsula near the town of Evpatoria. This first page involves only numbers and so is much easier for puzzle solvers to decode than a more famous message broadcast toward distant star cluster M13 in 1974. (The solution is here.)
Image credit: Yuvan Dutil & Stephane Dumas