We keep sending educational junk to aliens 

100% true, but to play devil's advocate. We \did\ break the enigma code, and that was deliberately designed to be obfuscated to an unbreakable degree. So there is hope that an advanced race would be able to decode a message specifically designed to be decoded and understood.

It’s fun to imagine aliens did get the Pioneer plaque, But all they wound up getting out of it was a pop culture way to depict aliens as naked humans who always travel in pairs.

@@JJMcCullough I like this

@@mattcelder With the enigma code we knew what the expected output would be, readable text, in the German language. The task gets a little harder without that knowledge. That said, I believe any sufficiently advanced species would be able decode a message that is MEANT to be decoded. The greetings and such would be very hard to understand, even if decoded. You can't really use mathematical formula or physical properties to represent "hello I will not harm you." So they would be able to decode the message of our intelligence, but not the message it self.

This is why I think we will not have successful artifacts that can communicate with aliens until we have the ability to immediately display a bunch of visual information to them upon its discovery, without the need for decoding.

I think the French message is different from the English one though; the French word for moon is absent.

@@alfyryan6949 Yes. The French part says: "May this great fact allow man to rediscover the earth and find peace."

Certified Canada moment

@@wbcx4491 ah so now they’re saying “the aliens must both French AND English”

@@galacticupfan7386 Canada's always been consistent that everyone must know both english and french, why not aliens too?

I predict the next video will be about… why people like vintage stuff.

@@acasualcactus5878. Okay, I won't lie: that is actually a pretty good guess. I wouldn't be surprised if JJ _did_ make that video, sooner or later.

You might need to run the math again. I think its four lotteries.

@@matthewmacleod6506. You're right. My mistake.

H I S T O R Y

That's officially called the Anthony Weiner Code.

We have been left on read

@@rainmanjr2007 he makes a great case for nominal determinism.

#AliensToo

The plaques are kind of trying to have it both ways. They refer to "earth" and "men" but then also refer to specific countries.

Yup, this is more of an attempt to persevere the idea of humanity forever. Since the likelihood of our civilization to continue for millions of years is probably slim. In case of our destruction, the only guaranteed way to memorialize our existence is by preserving it in the endless space and time of the universe.

Also there is a reference to God like Nixon wanted even if it’s not maybe clear. A.D means year of our Lord in Latin

And yet most of it is on a disc the size of a bottle cap.

Even wandhelm had an accent and that isn’t bad because accents help us tell each other apart and can bring us closer to one another so jimmy carter should have done✔️☑️✅ it since accents aren’t something to be so conscious about

I would like to think Carter made that excuse for an even better reason. He might not want to portray the US as a favored and dominant nation to extraterrestrials.

Carter didn’t want aliens to think English is spoken with a Southern accent. So, as a result, they will be forced to conclude that it is spoken in an Austrian accent. Also, why did Kurt Waldheim feel the need to record the message in English instead of his native German? Either language would be equally alien to whoever finds it.

@@kurtisokc well English was assuming an "international language" status at that time so I assume he was doing it as a sort of non-politically/regionally specific greeting like how news broadcasters learn their artificial accent so they listeners don't associate them with anywhere in particular

@@professordogwood8985 I hope that's not true because that would be pointlessly stupid and I would have an even worse opinion of his presidency than I already do. Though this whole thing isn't that big of a deal.

"Hey Bob, I'm telling you, it's too dangerous to get closer to earth, the Avengers could be watching us"

If only someone could come up with a movie like this premise. We could call it Galaxy Quest.

@@TheRagingPlatypus IIRC that was about a war between two aliens species, were one side was using tech ideas taken from an old campy scifi television series. Seems more like The Last Star Fighter and less like The Avengers?

@@TheRagingPlatypus That's a fun movie!

Or if they miscalculate the size of Earth and get swallowed by a dog

Didn't want his peanut farm to get in the way of his being a good president/ how his presidency was perceived Did not want his southern accent to get in the way of how aliens perceive the human race in 30,000 years

I once watched an interview with former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, where he was asked to look back on his cooperation with Jimmy Carter. He essentially said that Carter was one of the most honest and good people, he'd ever met, inside and outside of politics. But Carter must've been very difficult to work with, since he kept changing his opinion so much. Schmidt seemed quite dissatisified with that. So, good man, maybe not the best president. Not the worst, verdict, I think. :)

The last president that I actually truly respect

@@Kiahona "good president"

@@LucasBenderChannel Yeah I think he was a huge flip flopper, before and during his presidency. Nothing wrong with flip flopping though if it’s an honest change. That’s what growth is.

It’s certainly a TON of homework for them. If we got an alien record I’d just want it to be in one of their languages. We don’t have to understand ALL of their breathtaking cultural diversity right away. Basic communication should be the first priority.

especially when one of the languages is latin ahaha

@@JJMcCullough I’m more shocked the Canadian guy didn’t record it in French as well 😅

The its a dumb alien if it cannot conceive that a race has different languages

@@Rokiriko Why would they necessarily? Maybe they don't even have a spoken language and communicate some other way. They would be ALIEN. Their ways of doing things could be radically different from ours.

Maybe he was worried about the association with Space Georgia. (easily detected by the rifle racks on their space ships)

@@Clell65619 ahahahahaha

Human centric? The hell? We are humans lmao

honestly one of the most legitimate criticisms

@@patrickosullivan7783 The aliens probably didn't use spears/bows during their pre-spatial times to base arrows around.

@@patrickosullivan7783 Yes, and these plaques are for non-humans

@@KhAnubis fair enough

Not really sure how it's quaint. We used a material that won't degrade over thousands of years. We never expected it to be found for long after we are possibly no longer here as a species. We weren't trying to send a message to the galaxy over in a couple years xD

@@Sir.Craze- I mean that it’s charming. It’s something fun and fascinating. It’s a product of it’s time, something we probably wouldn’t do today.

I was thinking it’d be cooler how much (or little) the geography of earth would change if aliens ever did visit

@@lierlimelemon3785 asuming that the plaque would still be there long after we are gone, it would let the aliens know how earth look like when we first visit the moon

@@juanfranciscovillarroelthu6876 It's true, the continents could be all different by then.

The moon is slowly moving away from the earth, and will one day escape our gravity and fly out into the ether. It might be the only thing from Earth to escape the eventual expansion of the sun.

@@CiabanItReal it probably won't the moon's rate (around 3cm/year) is too slow. It won't have time to scape compared to the Sun's death that at which point would like either shallow earth and the moon or completely destroyed their surfaces

The Catholic Church would be pleased

@@JJMcCullough do you know if Drake and Sagan were practicing Catholics? That would explain it

Honestly when it comes to fairly timeless languages, Latin's a pretty solid candidate to pick. Plus if the aliens end up being time travelers it would work for them all the way back another 2500 years or so if they miscalculate.

That's what I thought. But then I realized that by the time the plaque reaches aliens every language we speak now will be dead. Hell, Latin is actually the longest surviving language in some ways since more people can speak it than people can speak its ancient contemporaries.

“Hello whoever you are. We come with good will, and bring peace through the stars” was the rough translation I got.

Lets just hope this space race doesn't die as quickly as the first.

Let’s also hope we finally get to mars, dammit

I agree, but that is not what we told ourselves.

You are partially correct! The funding from the government and such was given for the express purpose of proving our ability in space, to let people know "no matter where you are on the planet we can reach out and touch you." With "touch" being coded speak for kill or disrupt. The rest of it, the ideas about sending voyager and such were made by scientists who truly believed what they were doing was for the benefit of all humankind.

Lol I thought that too and took me a while before I knew JJ was talking about NASA 😂

I'm from LI and I don't know it! lol

He was joking, of course.

It's depressing to me. Even though he became the most powerful person in the world he was still so influenced by internalized prejudice.

@@jonhanson8925 It is an issue still it is well documented that people with southern accents are discriminated against to this day.

@@EmperorNero I know, that's what makes it sad.

@@EmperorNero sucks considering they have the coolest american accent imo

Kinda like Kon Tiki kinda stuff, the accomplishments of very primitive societies are more interesting because it was more of a challenge. And yes I'm aware the Kon Tiki thing is probably not true, but still. One of the toughest parts of this subject is somehow knowing a lot about a civilization that by its nature is not easily known about.

Yeah I tend to agree, although they might be advanced enough that they've considered coming here but don't want to disturb our natural evolution, like a galactic heritage site or something like that. Its possible there are already rules established for not interfering with early civilizations in particular star systems and a strict "no-contact" rule may apply. Or they might just think we're complete douchebags and want nothing to do with us.

I've always been of the notion that the Plaques and Records of Pioneer and Voyager was more of a time capsule for any humans who find it 10k years later more than as a message to aliens.

@@samuelb7546 even then it may take millions if not billions of years for the message to get anywhere. If anything it’s more of a galactic time capsule, showing whoever discovers it what once was the galaxy they live in and that there was once another intelligent civilization, for an intelligent civilization like us would probably be asking the same questions we do.

While I agree that intelligent life is probably too far away to ever conceivably contact, I don't share the belief that interstellar civilizations are likely to be dangerous. Given that we have the capacity _right now_ to cause the collapse of our own civilization, I believe that, if interstellar travel is feasible at all, there's a strong selective pressure that only the least warlike civilizations, or those that are able to largely move past war, are likely to advance to the point of interstellar travel without destroying themselves in a nuclear war or similar event. Going a step further, people will often liken the dangers of spacefaring aliens to European colonialism, that the aliens would exploit and kill us for our resources. But why would they bother with the expense of war, even a heavily lopsided one, when they could easily get the same resources from an uninhabited planet without having to fight for it? What is there on Earth that they couldn't find elsewhere in the Solar System? Any elemental resource could be easily mined from a lifeless planet or an asteroid. If they need things like wood or fossil fuels, I'd bet, based on how long there was life on Earth before humanity emerged, there are loads of planets with plant and animal life, but no intelligent life, that would be easier to colonize. Would they want to enslave us? I doubt it. There's a reason most of the world abandoned slavery during the Industrial Revolution: machines are generally more efficient than slave labor. How much more advanced would their machines be if they could cross the galaxy? I don't see any good reason why an interstellar civilization would want to go to war with us.

I think that technology would eventually allow us to travel incredible distances in a short amount of time (some sort of “teleportation” seems likely to me) and these probes would likely be taken by someone with this technology before they contact an alien race. Probably either some government or private collector

I think that this would be the most JJ thing possible!

“So I assume he is still very venerated on earth too?” “Uh about that…”

Let me tell about our lord and savior Kurt Waldheim

intergalactic doxing

@@davidvosspoor4694 I’m old enough to have to look up the meaning of “doxing”.😂

I almost wish I was old enough to have witnessed all the fly-bys of the Voyagers. The only one I remember was Neptune in 1989. Every time was our first real glimpses of the planets of the outer solar system.

50000 years from now we receive a response: A dickpick, seriously? Blocked.

We forgot to tell them to pick up a pizza.

"We sent you our animal sounds, please respond"

Yeah you might be right

Like Nassau

@@oliverkarehag9883 Or Nasser (like the Egyptian ruler)

NASA’s gone funky NASA’s gone soul NASA rock and NASA roll

@@ninjawarrior8994 that isnt how you pronounce nasser.

But couldn’t they just as easily view it as a horizontal rectangle or an upside down rectangle?

Does this stand true in all counting systems? I'm pretty bad with this stuff but how will they know which number base to use for that?

@@JJMcCullough I mean if I recieved and image from an extraterrestrial life form I would definetly view it from every single angle and I'm sure the aliens would probably feel the same about this

@@JJMcCullough given all the other obstacles, I don’t think that the risk of it being “backwards” or sideways makes it any harder to decode. They might think we look like we’re standing on our heads or have a horizontal posture, but that’s not really a big deal.

@@crazydragy4233 primes are independent of the number base.

EXACTLY! like, obviously if they're advanced enough, the alien researcher/scientist equivalent is going to be looking at it.

@@machinismus I can imagine the horrible disappointment of an alien researcher who finds the voyager probe decifers how to play the record only for it to be a bunch of random nonsense stock images

Every extraterrestrial civilization has their own NASA, they just call it the National Aeronautics and Space Aliens

@@synthiandrakon Are you kidding me? I would kill for the chance to see stock footage of an alien world created by an alien civilization. That's one of the most precious artifacts I could imagine! And yet I also recognize I might be in a minority here and plenty of people would rather have a $20 bill. So I guess we're hoping that even if the aliens that find it aren't curious as a whole, maybe there are some curious individuals that would value our message.

​@@synthiandrakon It sounded very 1970s psychedelics like. It's already starting to sound alien for us in 2022.

Honestly, at this point, the hairstyle's like a silent co-presenter.

It's not an era, it's a hair-a

I also associate them with diffrent things. Mustache era: Kinda of like old RU-vid with him in a room without a "Set" and trying to mix politics with geography, maps and retro stuff. Took place during the late Obama and early Trump years The blonde era: In my opinion peak JJ with him doing less politics and him doing more generally educational stuff we are familiar with along with travel vlogs and unboxings from fans. The long hair era: Associated with the coronavirus pandemic and he probably didn't go out to hair cuts regularly and saw his content become more popular. But starting to become a little stale in my opinion. RU-vid shorts become his biggest hits The short hair era: A possible return to something pre-covid and maybe a return to travel.

That was more "Hey we think you left one of your guys on our planet, does this guy sound familiar?"

We'll probably physically reach the cluster well before the Arecibo message.

Lord Frieza is gonna find it first.

That would definitely be a great follow up!

Tom Scott has a nice video about it

even starfleet bunged it up. writing 'radioactive' on the casing, even a radiationproof android with brain damage (who could at least read the word and reproduce its sounds but had no idea what it meant anymore) didn't have the remotest indication he shouldn't open it up and sell its contents.

@@HAbarneyWK which one?

@@cutecommie "Inside The Tunnels That Will Store Nuclear Waste For 100,000 Years"

Aliens would likely assume at first these sounds are saying the same thing. So their decryption would at first work with that assumption. After a while they'd probably notice inconsistencies and simply assume a variety of messages.

It’s actually extremely confusing when you think about it because a lot of the messages are similar but distinct. So all of the UN people, for instance are giving slightly different versions of a very similar generic diplomatic greeting.

That's because we had knowledge, at least partial, of one of the languages used. The Rosetta Stone was decoded because one of the language used was Ancient Greek. Since the aliens are going to be equally clueless about all our languages they can't do what we did. Honestly whatever we said in whatever language had no chance of being translated by someone with no prior knowledge of any Earth language.

And what if the aliens don't have visual or auditory senses as part of their anatomy? What if they don't use lungs for gas exchange and have little floppy bits that can cause compression waves in a gaseous atmosphere if they reposition them while exhaling? What if they communicate by a means similar to how an octopus changes color, but they use paterns of temperature gradients on their skin that they can control, and they have to be in skin to skin contact to communicate with another being of their kind? Perhaps these aliens have built giant membranes that collect radiation from space to perform their astronomy, but they think of their "telescopes" as "mechanical skin" that receives information from space, instead of thinking of their telescopes like mechanical eyes the way humans do. Alien thought universes are infact alien. I'm just saying. 😉

I was thinking the same thing. The smart move would have been one message repeated in multiple languages.

Probably in the same way we mostly avoid the Northern Sentinel Island, they might see us as primitive hence best untouched with the only contact being with top levels of governments of the most powerful countries.

I mean, more power to them, honestly. I certainly wouldn't blame them 😅

@@JustAlice_Mai to be fair we did try to make contact with the northern sentinel island inhabitants many times...it just didn't go well any of those times

Instead their introduction to English comes from an Austrian

I dunno. They're seriously more like time capsules and vain proofs to self at best.

you should watch the movie: species

Here Is The Quality Canadian Content: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gLUGkrk3Cjg.html

The more I read about Nixon, the more human he becomes, as opposed to villainous caricatures like in Futurama.

@@darkfool2000 Usually true with most people we know as histories villains. The reverse is also usually true for our heroes, unfortunately

I'm sure its inclusion was intentional.

A reminder of our glorious leader, Richard Nixon.

love your pfp

Then may Earth’s god help us all

I'd think that a spacefaring civilization wouldn't slime their scales over ONE word from a fledgling civilization like ours was when the probe was sent. 2cents.

@@JJMcCullough “This is Lrrr, Ruler of the Planet Omicron Persei 8. We have received your message, and accept your declaration of war.”

You should watch the movie Contact (based on a book by Carl Sagan). It takes this idea in an interesting direction.

I have heard that those signals fade to become basically undetectable past a certain distance. It's more a case of "if they're in the area but never checked on our system specifically, they might pick up radio signals and come say hi"

Hahaha that’s true with the man waving

Or they could not be around at all.

Because you are!

@@JJMcCullough I'm glad to hear that!

If they have the technology to intercept and decode messages like these, then there's a 99% chance that their understanding of chemistry and physics is just as detailed, likely more detailed than us. Otherwise they wouldn't even receive the plaque, so why bother?

The (paradoxically named) Unproductive Failure already answered your question. I'm pretty sure thry would have have do these things to really reach a level of complexity and advancement comparable to ours.

Our species has used technology to detect information beyond our senses in touch, hearing, smell/taste, and sight, including images like the Cosmic Microwave Background, which only exists in lower-energy light than we can see. It is entirely possible that aliens smart enough to understand the process of language could have technology which would help them detect information beyond their senses. Gold is the least reactive element beside Platinum and the Noble Gases so it almost certainly won't react with any organic beings and probably not anything silicon-based.

@@CharlieQuartz True. And along that line about technology, personally I think that if we did encounter life that would be something we would consider "intelligent" by any measure we understand, it's entirely possible that they wouldn't be that advanced yet. Someone from the 1700s who had language and society and culture and knew a little about the world still would have no way to process any type of radio or microwave signal. And for all we know, aliens COULD have been broadcasting radio signals to earth for a few thousand years only to give up 500 years ago under the assumption that we weren't smart enough.

@@colonelb I agree! Though it could also be argued that if species don't tend to destroy themselves after they discover energy-efficient weapons like atomics and they invent technologies as quickly as we have, they would more often be found with advanced technologies than not. We have only being teasing with invention and language and everything we consider "intelligent" for about 10,000 years. If civilizations continue for thousands of years in the future and things become ever more stable (as they have been tending to do) it could be more likely to find a species after they are capable of receiving lower-energy signals.

Only way i can imagine X ray sensing would be usefull to an organism would be sa a way to detect radioation sources, maybe it would be radiotrophe, which itsellf seams as a very sepecific niche fo an organims to fill. Hence i am sceptical that there would be any inteligent allien which can naturally sense anything which smaller wavelnght then UV.

@@antonlencses8622 Well and that's kind of my point that we are biased in as much as 100% of every example of life we have seen has been life that has evolved to exist here on Earth and so they all have things in common obviously that make sense for here, but as a consequence of that we have a very hard time even conceptualizing how and why life could be any different which may turn out in the long run to be a mistake.