A Simple Response To An Elemental Message

A Simple Response to an Elemental Message (ASREM) was an Interstellar Radio Message (IRM) consisting primarily of 3775 worldwide responses to this initiative's posed question; "''How will our present, environmental interactions shape the future?''" This transmission also features a smaller 'Honorary Mention' text archive and a series of images of Earth.

This interstellar "message in a bottle" was transmitted on 10 October 2016, at 20:00 UTC by the European Space Agency Cebreros (DSA2) deep-space tracking station towards Polaris; the Pole Star which is approximately 434 light years (133 parsecs) from Earth. The IRM consisted of a single 27,653,733 byte, 866 second transmission. As of , the signal has traveled approximately .

Concept and plan overview

The non-for-profit ASREM initiative was devised and produced by artist Paul Quast in collaboration with the UK Astronomy Technology Centre, European Space Agency and the University of Edinburgh along with researchers working at the Johns Hopkins University and also the European Southern Observatory.

Unlike other IRM, the transmission's stated purpose was devised for a terrestrial, ' overview effect' application; "to look at our civilisation's past, present and future environmental interactions on Earth by using light's 'round trip' from our planet's Pole Star as a symbolic and temporal odyssey". This initiative's narrative examined the 'Critical Decade' (2010-2020); a pivotal point within our civilisation's history proposed by a series of climate researchers in which present ecological decisions may irreversibly commit future generations to adversity. The worldwide public were challenged to consider their role within shaping the planet's future biosphere in the newly defined Anthropocene era while also considering approaches which may be adopted to resolve climatic/biological concerns faced on Earth today.

The research purpose of this initiative and its publicly generated material (besides its resonant legacy travelling through space) was outlined by its authors as:
"the submitted content was also accumulated to contribute to ongoing dialogue on how our civilisation collectively foresees its role within shaping Earth's future biosphere and provide a means to analyse these perspectives for cross-cultural universals between nations within further academic research." An initial analysis of this submitted material has already provided a number of insights into the noösphere of participating countries with further examinations currently ongoing.

As well as providing engagement with the worldwide public on these pertinent concerns, a number of climate scientists and astronomers also contributed to this initiative; submitting perspectives gained from their various fields of research conducted within Antarctica, the Arctic and other research facilities located around the world.

Target

The organisers of this transmission stated that Polaris α UMi Aa was chosen "due to the cultural iconography this star possesses, its tangible links to the transmissions stated ecological narrative and the possibility to provide a contemporary, environmental chapter to the Pole Star's symbology". In Greek, the star was known as the Cynosure (original; Kynosoura), a title which later entered the English language to denote "an object that serves as a focal point of attention and admiration" or "something that serves to guide".

The Polaris planetary system, even if it exists, may not be suited for life, because it is a supergiant type F7Ib star in a triple star system ith nearby companionswhich should (to present knowledge) possess very powerful stellar winds around its vicinity. In addition to this, the age of Polaris has been calculated to be approximately 70 million years and thus this star may be too young to support the development of life. Another IRM entitled Across the Universe was previously sent towards this stellar location by NASA's nearby MDSCC facility in 2008.

Message components

This transmission consisted of four components in the order;
AM → IMAGES → AM → IMAGES → AM → MES → HM

* (AM) The Arecibo message was included at intervals to serve as a Rosetta Stone template.
* (IMAGES) The ASREM image archive consisted of 70 open-source photographs which were chosen to be reflective of this initiative's ecological purpose. Images were rendered into frequency-modulated files using binary frequency-shift keying, a format that utilises universal laws of mathematics to render a two-dimensional canvas which was initially developed by Dr. Frank Drake et al. for the Arecibo message M in 1974. While the cardinality of 1,679 was chosen for the Arecibo message because it is a semiprime (product of two prime numbers), to be arranged rectangularly as 73 rows by 23 columns, the ASREM initiative rendered all transmitted images in a more complex cardinality of 381,851, to be arranged as 383 rows by 997 columns.
* (MES) ASREM messages submitted by the worldwide public in response to the question; "''How will our present, environmental interactions shape the future?''" Initially, responses were limited to 156 characters which was subsequently lifted to accept the proportion of statements, proverbs, poetry and satirical messages submitted. In total, 4,203 messages were submitted, of which 3,775 were deemed to address this posed question and thus became the transmission's main content. These 3,775 messages were submitted by individuals from 146 countries in 16 different languages. The file was wrapped into a UTF-8 format before being encoded into binary with no particular emphasis placed upon the content's potential to be deciphered by possible intercepting extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) ue to the character range and potential for interpretation This assumed range has been estimated to exceed 520 unique characters. The authors of this initiative have expressed intention that these contents are "created by Earth's inhabitants for Earth's inhabitants"; providing the possibility for advancing planetary perspective, stewardship and communal discourse on ecological issues.
* (HM) The Honorary Mention archive contains inspirational and iconic quotes related to this initiative's purpose, submitted by individuals around the world. In total, 81 quotes by individuals such as Carl Sagan, Yuri Gagarin, Mahatma Gandhi, Paul Crutzen, Patrick Moore, Al Worden, Ban Ki-moon and Koko the gorilla