Photo Miriam Espacio / Unsplash
Michigan Man
In 1971, engineer John Shepherd wondered about the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. He got carried away with this topic so much that he decided to try to contact aliens.
However, the way he chose was unusual - music. Every day for 27 years, he broadcast various compositions using radio equipment, which he collected and developed himself - in his personal laboratory .
According to John, he composed all the playlists himself - they included unusual music that could convey pure human emotions. The list includes the works of the groups Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, as well as Harmonia. The voices of jazz performers - Ornette Coleman, Charlie Parker and Lee Morgan - were often sent to interstellar space.
After many years, John Shepherd nevertheless curtailed the project - the aliens did not respond, and it became too expensive to maintain the laboratory. But he still managed to leave his mark on history and people's memory - Netflix filmed a documentary about his work , it was released on August 20.
Records from Cape Canaveral
In 1977, NASA launched two space probes to explore the planets of the solar system. But the devices also had a secondary mission - to carry a message to alien civilizations. For this purpose, gilded gramophone records were attached to the sides of the Voyagers .
The discs contain encoded scientific data, images of Earth views, photographs of people and animals. However, most of the message is made up of iconic musical compositions - works by Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky, works by Louis Armstrong and Chuck Berry, as well as folk music from various countries. You can listen to the recordings from the disc on the MIT website .
DJ set for "Lieuten b"
In 2018, the founders of the Sónar electronic music festival tried to attract the attention of aliens with sound . They invited 35 DJs and invited them to write tracks for sending into space - towards the exoplanet Leuthen b in the habitable zone of Leuthen from the constellation Canis Minor.
To implement the project, researchers from the IEEC (Catalonia Institute of Space Studies) and METI International laboratories were involved, which creates and transmits interstellar messages to search for extraterrestrial civilizations. The broadcast was made using an EISCAT antenna in Norway.
The musical message will reach the distant exoplanet on March 11, 2030. And if intelligent life forms are present on it, their response will return to Earth no earlier than 2042.
Additional reading in "Hi-Fi World":
"Hear" space: from dark matter to comet Churyumov - Gerasimenko
How space "sounds" - from the noise of the ISS to radio waves emitted by celestial bodies
Recordings of the Apollo missions with the NASA flight control center
Let's discuss what other examples of similar stories do you know? There is another question: is it worth broadcasting something like that without an accurate understanding of the recipient's "musical tastes"?