The so-called Arecibo Message , which is a message of a length of 1679 bits and that was sent in the direction of the star cluster called M13, turns just today, November 16, 2020, no less than 46 years.
The message contains information about the situation of the Solar System, our planet and the human.
Arecibo message
The Arecibo Message was designed by Frank Drake, Carl Sagan and others, and was transmitted in 1974. It has the bits it has, 1679, because the number 1679 is the product of two prime numbers and therefore it can only be decomposed into 23 rows and 73 columns or 23 columns and 73 rows, so that whoever reads it decides to organize the data in the form of a quadrilateral.
In fact, with the ones and zeros ordered from right to left and from top to bottom, the same information is obtained.
Read from left to right , it presents the numbers from one to ten, the atomic numbers of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorus (components of the DNA of homo sapiens sapiens, the species that sends the message); the formulas of the sugars and bases in the nucleotides of DNA; the number of nucleotides in DNA and its double helical structure; the figure of a human being and its height; the population of the Earth; the solar system; and an image of the Arecibo radio telescope with its diameter.
In the image above: the element in the center represents the human being. The item on the left its average height: 1764 mm. This corresponds to 14 (written horizontally) multiplied by the only length measurement that appears in the message, which is neither more nor less than its wavelength (126 mm). The item on the right represents the human population size for 1974 encoded in 32 bits: 4 292 853 750. (Eighth line).
It was sent in the direction of M13, located in the direction of the constellation Hercules, at a distance of about 25,000 light years is made up of about 400,000 stars . It will take about 25 millennia to reach its destination (and a hypothetical answer another 25). To this must be added the fact that the signal is most likely going to degrade during its journey due to cosmic dust and whatever is in between.