A Beacon in the Galaxy: Updated Arecibo Message for Potential FAST and SETI Projects

TL;DR

This paper presents an updated, comprehensive interstellar message designed for transmission to extraterrestrial intelligences, incorporating mathematical, physical, biological, and visual information, and specifies optimal timing for future broadcasts from major radio telescopes.

Contribution

It introduces a new, detailed interstellar communication message building upon the Arecibo message, tailored for modern telescopes like FAST and the Allen Telescope Array.

Findings

Design of an updated interstellar message with detailed content

Calculation of optimal transmission timing for future broadcasts

Proposal for using new radio telescopes to send the message

Abstract

An updated, binary-coded message has been developed for transmission to extraterrestrial intelligences in the Milky Way galaxy. The proposed message includes basic mathematical and physical concepts to establish a universal means of communication followed by information on the biochemical composition of life on Earth, the Solar System's time-stamped position in the Milky Way relative to known globular clusters, as well as digitized depictions of the Solar System, and Earth's surface. The message concludes with digitized images of the human form, along with an invitation for any receiving intelligences to respond. Calculation of the optimal timing during a given calendar year is specified for potential future transmission from both the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope in China and the SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array in northern California to a selected region of the Milky Way which has been proposed as the most likely for life to have developed. These powerful new beacons, the successors to the Arecibo radio telescope which transmitted the 1974 message upon which this expanded communication is in part based, can carry forward Arecibo's legacy into the 21st century with this equally well-constructed communication from Earth's technological civilization.