Sending a Message Into Space
OBJECTIVE: After completing this lesson, students will be more aware of the way they think of the world, and/or our society, and themselves as individuals.
I. Give the students a handout explaining the radio message transmitted from Arecibo, in Puerto Rico in l974. (See p. 8 for a detailed explanation.) Read and discuss information about the transmission and the contents of the message.
Either as a class or in teams, ask the students to pretend they have been selected as a committee to brainstorm a list of images, words, phrases, symbols, sounds, etc. that they think are representative of the world or of our society today. Give them a specific amount of time to complete this activity.
Depending upon the approach you took, the class working as a whole, or in teams, assign the project through the medium of collage or some other medium, of creating an art form that the class or the teams think represents our society and would introduce us to extraterrestrial intelligence. When the project is finished, there should be one (if the class worked together), or several representations, accompanied, perhaps, by music or sounds that have been recorded. If the team approach is used, each team can present its representation to the class. The final product can be mounted in the classroom as a class statement.
II. This same activity can be implemented in which each student brainstorms images, phrases, words, symbols, sounds, etc. that represent him or herself. A representation of the brainstorm can be created through the medium of art or through any medium the student chooses and presented to the class. Again, the question guiding the project is: If you could send a representation of yourself into space to introduce yourself to an extraterrestrial civilization, how would you put it together; how would you package yourself? What best represents you?
The final products of this activity also can be mounted as statements in the classroom.
This lesson is meant to challenge students to be reflective, and to turn the telescope inward and to think about their society and about themselves as individuals.
VOCABULARY AND TERMS FOR THE UNIT
Andromeda Galaxy: the nearest spiral galaxy comparable to our own, about 2 million light years away.
Arecibo: the largest semi-steerable radio/radar observatory on Earth.
binary system: a pair of coorbiting stars.
Drake Equation: the statement that the fraction of stars harboring intelligent life equals the number of all stars times a sequence of fractions, such as the fraction of all stars having planets, the fraction of planets that are habitable, and so on. Named after the radio astronomer Frank Drake.
evolutionary theory: a theory in which changes occur by relatively slow processes commonly growing out of initial conditions.
exobiology: study of life beyond the Earth.
extraterrestrial: outside the limits of the Earth.
interstellar: situated or occurring between stars.
Large Magellanic Cloud: the larger of two galaxies nearest the Milky Way, irregular in form and visible to the naked eye in the Southern Hemisphere.
Milky Way Galaxy: the spiral galaxy in which we live.
nova: a type of suddenly bright star resulting from explosive brightening when gas is dumped from one member of a binary star pair onto the other.
protostar: a gravitationally stable cloud of stellar mass contracting in an early pre-main-sequence evolutionary state.
red giant: a post-main-sequence star whose surface layers have expanded to many solar radii and have relatively low temperatures
Small Magellanic Cloud: the smaller of two galaxies nearest the Milky Way, irregular in form and visible to the naked eye in the Southern Hemisphere.
Solar system: the Sun and all bodies orbiting around it.
stellar evolution: the evolution of a star from one form to another forced by changes in composition as nuclear reactions proceed.
supernova: a massive stellar explosion blowing off most of the star's mass, leaving a dense core.
terrestrial: pertaining to the Earth or this world.
white dwarf star: a planet-sized star of roughly solar mass and very high density produced as a terminal state after nuclear fuels have been consumed.