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2 Rumberg. R. (1977) in Emylopacdia gf‘ Phi Ph~~siology Nre Series Vol. 5, Photosynthesis I. (ed. A. Trebst and M. Avron) pp. 405--415, Springer-Verlag, Berlin

3 Williams, R. J.P. (1961)5. Tkoret. Biol. 1. l-13 The debate on the mechanism of oxi- dative phosphorylation is now closed and we can accept no more corre- spondence on this topic.

Nicholas Wade

LETTER FROM WASHINGTON

Postcard from planet Earth

A topics of lasting interest to science-fic- tion writers and others is that of extra- terrestrial communication. What do you first say to alien beings when you have their attention? Bragging about our scien- tific knowledge is an obvious pitfall : aliens able to intercept messages are likely to know it all already, besides which anything we tell about now will seem painfully back- ward by the time any reply is received. In Lives ofa Cell, Lewis Thomas argues that what we should send is music: ‘I would vote for Bach, all of Bach, streamed out into space, over and over again’.

NASA’s decision to put a message aboard the pair of Voyager spacecraft launched recently to the outer planets has required an actual solution to the problem. On the suggestion of radioastronomer Frank Drake of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, the spacecraft carry a copper disc somewhat like a long-playing record, except that its signals are convert- ible into pictures as well as sounds.

The Voyager disc follows Thomas’s ad- vice to some extent: it contains 90 minutes of music, including a few selections from Bach. But perhaps its most significant fea- ture is a collection of 115 pictures, chosen by Drake and a group of colleagues at Cornell. Other groups chose the music and a concert of terrestrial sounds.

Drake’s picture-show for any aliens who may find the Voyager is an intriguing at- tempt to portray the diversity of life on

earth and of human societies. The opening slides give the alien a brief tour of the solar system, coming to rest on earth. Then fol- low pictures of DNA, of cells, and of man’s anatomy. After this introduction the alien is shown the human environment: moun- tains and valleys, islands and deserts, trees and animals.

From the pictures of human societies the alien will learn that we occupy ourselves in dancing, eating, and hunting. A multiple exposure of a gymnast somersaulting on a bar demonstrates the grace and agility of the human frame. A shot of Olympic sprinters (Valeri Borzov of the USSR is in the lead) displays our athletic skills. And a precariously poised mountaineer staring across a chasm proves that man is very brave - or crazy.

Drake’s group had been prepared to show evidence of the darker sides of hu- man existence, such as famine, war and pestilence. But the group found it instinc- tively rejected such items. The only allu- sion to war is a slide of the Great Wall of

TIBS - November 1977

China. The fact of death is indicated by a family picture showing the ages of each member, from which the aliens are sup- posed to infer that there is a limit on the human lifespan.

One point on which the Drake group did not have its way was in its attempt to ex- plain to the alien finders the facts of human reproduction. A picture of naked men and women, together with a diagram of the human genital system, were enclosed for this purpose. But the picture collection had to be ‘approved’ by Herbert Rowe, NASA’s associate administrator for exter- nal affairs, and Gerald J. Mossinghoff, deputy general counsel. Rowe and Mos- singhoff instructed Drake to cut the naked picture and the anatomical drawings. ‘We didn’t think that as far as aliens were concerned the picture was needed to tell the story’, Rowe says. The real reason for NASA’s petty censorship is probably un- willingness to stand up to criticism from the backwoods and boondocks. The simple plaque sent aboard the Pioneer spacecraft launched in 1973 and 1974 showed a naked man and woman against a pulsar-based map of earth’s position. It provoked three kinds of criticism ; a letter in the Los Ange- les Times inquired why taxpayer’s money was being spent on sending smut to outer space ; feminists complained that the man’s hand, not the woman’s, was shown raised in greeting; and people in England objected that the plaque had not been de- signed by a properly constituted inter- national committee.

After the pictures on the Voyager disc comes a set of greetings spoken in 55 dif- ferent languages, and a message from UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim. A mis- cellany of terrestrial sounds will treat the alien’s auditory sense to the noise of whales, rain, surf, footsteps, train whistles, and Saturn 5 rockets. Then follows 90 minutes of a variegated concert which in- cludes items of Western classical music alternated with Eastern music, folk music and the music of primitive peoples.

The aliens cannot fail to be delighted and intrigued by the disc, and they will surely wonder at the rustic mores of a species too prudish to furnish even a scien- tific description of its mode of reproduc- tion. Less enthusiastic about the disc are the citizens of Ithaca. Several pictures, showing such objects as highways and supermarkets, were shot locally, a fact which may induce the aliens to choose Ithaca as their landing-spot on earth. But since the disc’s first chance of being inter- cepted is in 40000 year’s time, when one of the spacecraft passes within a light year of a star, Ithacans need not worry unduly.