ThePioneer plaques are a pair ofgold-anodizedaluminiumplaques that were placed on board the 1972Pioneer 10 and 1973Pioneer 11spacecraft, featuring apictorial message, in case eitherPioneer 10 or11 is intercepted by intelligentextraterrestrial life. The plaques show the nude figures of a human male and female along with several symbols that are designed to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft.[1]
ThePioneer 10 and11 spacecraft were the first human-builtobjects to achieve escape velocity from theSolar System. The plaques were attached to the spacecraft'santenna supportstruts in a position that would shield them from erosion byinterstellar dust.
The original idea, that the Pioneer spacecraft should carry a message from mankind, was first mentioned byEric Burgess[2] when he visited theJet Propulsion Laboratory inPasadena, California, during theMariner 9 mission. He approachedCarl Sagan, who had lectured about communication with intelligent extraterrestrials at a conference inCrimea.
Sagan was enthusiastic about the idea of sending a message with the Pioneer spacecraft.NASA agreed to the plan and gave him three weeks to prepare a message. Together withFrank Drake he designed the plaque, and the artwork was prepared byLinda Salzman Sagan, who was Sagan's wife at the time. Additional artistic contributions were made byJon Lomberg.[3]
Both plaques were manufactured at Precision Engravers,San Carlos, California.[4]
The first plaque was launched withPioneer 10 on March 2, 1972, and the second followed withPioneer 11 on April 5, 1973.
In May 2017, a limited edition of 200 replicas engraved from the original master design at Precision Engravers was made available in aKickstarter Campaign, which also offered laser-engraved replicas.[5]
At the top left of the plaque is a schematic representation of thehyperfine transition ofhydrogen, which is themost abundant element in theuniverse. Thespin-flip transition of a hydrogen atom's electron has afrequency of about 1420.405 MHz, which corresponds to aperiod of 0.704 ns. Light at this frequency has a vacuumwavelength of 21.106 centimetres (8.309 in) (which is also the distance the light travels in that time period). Below the symbol, the small vertical line—representing thebinary digit 1—specifies a unit of length (21 cm) as well as a unit of time (0.7 ns). Both units are used as measurements in the other symbols.[6]
On the right side of the plaque, a nude man and woman are shown in front of the spacecraft.[7] Between the brackets that indicate the height of the woman, the binary representation of the number 8 can be seen (1000). In units of the wavelength of the hyperfine transition of hydrogen this means 8 × 21 cm = 1.68 meters (5 ft 6 in). These together indicate the scale of the humans relative to the craft itself.
The small defect in the first zero is only in reproductions of the plaque (like here) andnot on the original.[citation needed] It probably[original research?] dates back to a printing error in the original article "A Message from Earth" which is the primary source for many of the copies of the engraving.[1] In the replicas from the 2017 Kickstarter campaign mentioned above the delineation is correct.[5]
The right hand of the man is raised as a sign of good will. Although this gesture may not be understood, it offers a way to show theopposable thumb and how thelimbs can be moved.[8]
Originally Sagan intended the humans to be shown holding hands, but soon realized that an extraterrestrial might perceive them as a single creature rather than two organisms.[8]
The original drawings of the figures were based on drawings byLeonardo da Vinci and Greek sculptures.[8]
The woman'sgenitals are not depicted in detail; only themons pubis is shown. It has been claimed that Sagan, having little time to complete the plaque, suspected that NASA would have rejected a more intricate drawing and therefore made a compromise just to be safe.[9] Sagan said that the decision to not include the vertical line on the woman's genitalia (pudendal cleft) which would be caused by the intersection of thelabia majora was due to two reasons. First, Greek sculptures of women do not include that line. Second, Sagan believed that a design with such an explicit depiction of a woman's genitalia would be considered too obscene to be approved by NASA.[10] According to the memoirs ofRobert S. Kraemer, however, the original design that was presented to NASA headquarters included a line which indicated the woman'svulva,[11] and this line was erased as a condition for approval of the design by John Naugle, former head of NASA's Office of Space Science and the agency's former chief scientist.[11]
The radial pattern on the left of the plaque shows 15 lines emanating from the sameorigin. Fourteen of the lines have corresponding long binary numbers, which stand for theperiods ofpulsars, using the hydrogen spin-flip transition frequency as the unit. Since these periods will change over time, theepoch of the launch can be calculated from these values.
The lengths of the lines show the relative distances of the pulsars to theSun. A tick mark at the end of each line gives thez coordinate perpendicular to thegalactic plane.
If the plaque is found, only some of the pulsars may be visible from the location of its discovery. Showing the location with as many as 14 pulsars provides redundancy so that the location of the origin can betriangulated even if only some of the pulsars are recognized.
The data for one of the pulsars is misleading. When the plaque was designed, the frequency of pulsar "1240" (now known as J1243-6423) was known to only three significant decimal digits: 0.388 second.[1] The map lists the period of this pulsar in binary to much greater precision: 100000110110010110001001111000. Rounding this off at about 10 significant bits (100000110100000000000000000000) would have provided a hint of this uncertainty. This pulsar is represented by the long line pointing down and to the right.
The fifteenth line on the plaque extends to the far right, behind the human figures. This line indicates the Sun's relative distance to the center of the galaxy.
The pulsar map and hydrogen atom diagram are shared in common with theVoyager Golden Record.
At the bottom of the plaque is a schematicdiagram of the Solar System. A small picture of the spacecraft is shown, and thetrajectory shows its way pastJupiter and out of the Solar System. BothPioneers 10 and11 have identical plaques; however, after launch,Pioneer 11 was redirected towardSaturn and from there it exited the Solar System. In this regard thePioneer 11 plaque is inaccurate. The Saturn flyby ofPioneer 11 also greatly influenced its future direction and destination as compared toPioneer 10, but this fact is not depicted in the plaques.
Saturn's rings could give a further hint to identifying the Solar System.Rings around the planets Jupiter,Uranus, andNeptune were unknown when the plaque was designed; however these rings are not so easily visible.Pluto was considered to be a planet when the plaque was designed; in 2006 theIAU reclassified Pluto as adwarf planet. Other bodies classed as dwarf planets, such asEris, were unknown at the time the plaque was made.
The binary numbers above and below theplanets show the relative distance to the Sun. The unit is1/10 ofMercury's orbit. Rather than the familiar "1" and "0", "I" and "–" are used.
Behind the figures of the human beings, thesilhouette of the Pioneer spacecraft is shown in the samescale so that the size of the human beings can be deduced by measuring the spacecraft.
One of the parts of the diagram that is among the easiest for humans to understand may be among the hardest for potential extraterrestrial finders to understand: thearrow showing the trajectory of Pioneer.Ernst Gombrich criticized the use of an arrow because arrows are an artifact of hunter-gatherer societies like those on Earth; finders with a different cultural heritage may find the arrow symbol meaningless.[12]
Art criticCraig Owens said that sexual bias is exhibited by the decision to have the man in the diagram perform the raised hand gesture to greet the extraterrestrials while the woman in the diagram has her hands at her sides.[13] Feminists also took issue with this choice for the same reason.[14] To appease these criticisms, theVoyager Golden Record contains a "Diagram of vertebrate evolution" with an illustration of a similar couple where the woman raises her hand instead.[3]
Carl Sagan regretted that the figures in the finished engraving failed to look "panracial". Although this was the intent, the final figures were criticized for looking too white.[14] In the original drawing, in the attempt to represent "at least three of the major races of mankind", the woman was given eyes withepicanthic folds, and the man was given thick lips, a broad nose, and a short "Afro" style haircut. However that detail was eventually changed to a "non-African Mediterranean-curly haircut" in the finished engraving.[15] Furthermore, Carl Sagan said that Linda Sagan intended to portray both the man and woman as having brown hair, but the hair being only outlined, rather than being both outlined and shaded made their hair appear blonde instead.[16] Other people had different interpretations of the race of people depicted by the figures. White people, Black people and East Asian people each tended to think that the figures resembled their own racial group, so, although some people were proud that their race appeared to have been selected to represent all of humankind, others viewed the figures as "terribly racist" for "the apparently blatant exclusion" of other races.[17]
Linda Sagan decided to make the figures nude to address the problem of the type of clothes they should wear to represent all of humanity and to make the figures more anatomically educational for extraterrestrials, but some viewed their nudity as pornographic.[18] According to astronomer Frank Drake, there were many negative reactions to the plaque because the human beings were displayed naked.[19] When images of the final design were published in American newspapers, one newspaper published the image with the man's genitalia removed and another newspaper published the image with both the man's genitalia and the woman's nipples removed.[20] In one letter to a newspaper, a person angrily wrote that they felt that the nudity of the images made the images obscene.[21] In contrast, in another letter to the same newspaper, a person was critical of theprudishness of the people who found depictions of nudity to be obscene.[a] There have also been criticisms of the censorship of the female figure's genitals. Scientist and artistJoe Davis protested the depiction with hisPoetica Vaginal project wherein he used an MIT radar dish to transmit the recordings of a vaginal detector.[22]
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