"We offer friendship across the stars. You are not alone."That message is currently hurtling through space, it is estimated that the signal could last for the same distance as approximately one hundred solar systems, potentially lasting for hundreds of years.
I wrote that message, and I was lucky enough to be shortlisted by NASA for a public vote and to win that vote. I wrote that message as an olive branch in the unlikely scenario that alien life would come across it and manage to decrypt it. That message shows what humanity is capable of when we work together towards a common goal, it gives us a glimpse into a future of peaceful exploration of the solar system to try and discover who we are, why we're here, how we got here and what our place in the universe is.
The Message to Voyager competition, of which my message was a part, was launched with the same premise of the Golden Record, which was designed by the famous scientist Carl Sagan and his team to display various facets of human life in case aliens were to happen upon it. The Golden Record was attached to probes Voyager 1 and 2 when they were launched in the 70s.
At that time, the world was gripped in the middle of the Cold War, with two superpowers poised with their fingers above buttons ready to destroy the world with nuclear weapons. I was born in the 90s, after the Cold War ended, so I've never experienced the sheer terror of facing the reality of the world possibly ending at any moment but now, with increased tensions between America and North Korea and both leaders exchanging threats with each other, I have. Of course other problems such as climate change threaten our species but this threat has become real and immediate.
We all know what nuclear weapons would do to our planet. The devastation they'd cause, the untold misery, so I'll stick to reasons why we shouldn't kill off our species, I'm sure people know that too, but with such casual threats of apocalypse being banded around, I'd like to make sure.
We've been around a long time, roughly 200,000 years, and we've achieved a lot. We've created languages and art, we've created the Pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, the San Francisco bridge, the Burj Khalifa. We've sailed to the farthest corners of our blue sphere, we've mined underground, we've worked out how to fly, we've even reached out into space and walked on the Moon. We've harbored brilliant poets, scientists, doctors, mathematicians, theologians, philosophers, teachers, vets, physicists. We've had our issues, we've been barbarous at times, but from that dark past we've formed close bonds between each other, we've reached out across thousands of miles to work together towards a common cause. Through the creation of the internet we know now more than ever that this planet is shared by all.
As far as we know we're the only life that exists, most probably the only complex lifeforms in our solar system at least. Earth is an oasis in an inhospitable vacuum, surrounded by satellites and planets of "magnificent desolation", we're unique, positioned the right distance away from the sun and under just the right variables to harbor life.
Think of all we've achieved as a species, think of all we could achieve in the future. Think of how unique we are in the solar system or even, as far as we know so far, in the universe. Think of every person on this planet who has hopes and dreams, wants and desires, think of the children.
We're a species worth saving, on a planet worth saving.
