Humanity has long been trying to convey information about itself - both to its descendants and to the inhabitants of distant galaxies. And sometimes she herself finds messages from the past. Who left them and why?
Apocalypse letters
Not so long ago, a "Steve Jobs time capsule" was discovered in the United States - a 4-meter pipe buried in the fields of Colorado in 1983. Among other items (Rubik's cube, music recordings and canned beer) in the 30-year-old package was the founder's computer mouse Apple. And during the dismantling of the Columbus monument in Buenos Aires, a "parcel from the past" from its builders was found at the base of the monument, walled up almost a hundred years ago - with coins, stamps, banknotes, books, newspapers and other objects of the early 20th century.
Such "messages to posterity" are found in various places around the world, including ours. But, in addition to "fiery greetings" from the pioneers of the USSR and the builders of the BAM on the territory of Russia, according to paleoarchaeologists, one can find encrypted messages from ancient civilizations. For example, the famous Ica stones in Peru, a collection of more than 50 thousand artifacts, are considered “time capsules”,”Nikolai Subbotin, President of the Protohistory Association, told AIF. "Or the find of the Swiss explorer Erich von Daniken in the caves of Bolivia - gilded figurines of strange creatures and still not deciphered texts on metal plates."
Iki stone depicting the battle of people with dinosaurs.
Incredible stories are engraved on the surface of granite boulders in the vicinity of the city of Ica: the ancient inhabitants of the Andes hunt dinosaurs and use them as pets, perform complex operations such as craniotomy and transplantation of human organs, including the heart and brain, observe celestial bodies with the help of a telescope pipe or telescope. There are images in the collection of other inventions that, it is believed, were not known to the Indians - wheeled carriages and mysterious aircraft, as well as figures of underwater animals that lived hundreds of millions of years ago, maps of the continents and the starry sky. Is this a clever forgery or is it really information for descendants from civilizations unknown to us?
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It is believed that "dispatches" from time immemorial may turn out to be not just information about inventions and knowledge, but a warning about impending disasters or a description of a global catastrophe that has already taken place - a collision of the Earth with a giant meteorite, an atomic war or a shift in the planet's rotation axis. According to one of the versions, ancient builders laid similar warnings in megalithic monuments such as Stonehenge, the pyramids of South America and Egypt. “It is unlikely that people who survived a global catastrophe would waste time and energy on the construction of giant structures for the sake of unknown descendants. They would have one task - to survive,”Nikolai Subbotin doubts. “You shouldn't look for messages in the form of pyramids and megaliths,” Vadim Chernobrov, a researcher of anomalous phenomena, head of the Cosmopoisk movement, said. - If the apocalypse happens,the survivors will have no time to deal with such constructions … By the way, the concreted libraries located deep underground are not intended for 'messages to descendants' - this is just a way to preserve books in case of war or natural disaster."
However, examples of creating information storages for distant descendants are known. One of these "time capsules" was laid in New York in 1939 for a period of 5 thousand years. The capsule weighs 363 kg and is made of an alloy of copper, chromium and silver. Inside there is a spool of thread, a doll, an accounting book, a bottle with seeds, a microscope, a 15-minute newsreel, a microfilm with a dictionary, etc. In 1965, the second capsule was buried nearby. Both messages are buried at a depth of 15 m in the park and should be opened in 6939. And in 1940, the message "The Crypt of Civilization" was hermetically sealed in the United States, where more than 800 microfilms are kept behind a stainless steel door. books, audio recordings and films. It is planned to open it in 8113.
The noise of rain in space
According to Chernobrov, the chances of finding a "time capsule" in the Earth's orbit, on the Moon, Mars and other celestial bodies are much higher. But this will not be a message from an earthly civilization. After all, humanity itself launches such "letters" into space. Why don't our fellow minds in the universe do the same?
Voyager's golden disk with information about humanity and the location of the Sun in the Galaxy. Now, if anything, the aliens will find us. Photo: Public Domain / NASA / JPL - The Sounds of Earth Record Cover.
The first attempt to inform aliens about themselves was made by the Americans in 1972-1973. during the launch of the automatic probes "Pioneer": inside the spacecraft were laid plates of aluminum with graphic drawings: silhouettes of a man and a woman, the solar system and the trajectory of a ship, diagrams of the hydrogen atom and the position of the sun in the galaxy. In 1977, on board the Voyager spacecraft, gilded videodisks with slides were sent into space containing the most important scientific data, views of the Earth, scenes from the life of animals and humans, descriptions of their anatomical structure and biochemical structure, including a DNA molecule. In the same place, the binary code indicates the location of the solar system relative to 14 powerful pulsars, and also recorded sounds: the whisper of the mother and the cry of the child, the voices of birds and animals, the noise of wind and rain, the rumble of volcanoes and earthquakes, the rustling of sand and the ocean surf,human speech in the form of greetings in 58 languages, music by Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, etc.
“On Earth, any creations of human hands have too little chance of surviving for thousands and even more so millions of years. But in space "time capsules" can be stored forever, - said Chernobrov. - Satellites in high orbits rotate without dropping or burning up in the atmosphere. By the way, there are also so-called forbidden orbits in near-earth space, where unidentified space bodies move against the rotation of the Earth. The most famous of them is the “unaccounted for,” in the words of science fiction writer Alexander Kazantsev, the Black Prince satellite, launched by an unknown person and inaccessible to radars. All in all, there were about 20 such “black princes”.”
Diamond with a drop of blood
Already 4 "time capsules" have crossed the borders of the solar system. They also launched messages addressed to future generations of the Earth. For example, in 2008 the "Disc of Immortality" was sent to the ISS, which contains the digitized DNA of famous people, including the physicist Stephen Hawking. The idea of the action is to preserve human DNA in case of the apocalypse. In 2003, with the support of UNESCO and the European Space Agency, the KEO satellite project was launched with "letters to the future" from modern people: every inhabitant of the Earth could leave a message on the project website or send by mail a message in any language that will be taken into space. In addition, the device will hold a diamond with a drop of human blood, air, sea water, soil, astronomical clocks, human DNA, photographs of people of all cultures and an encyclopedic collection of knowledge about earthly civilization. It is assumedthat the satellite, according to the laws of celestial mechanics, will return to Earth's orbit in 50 thousand years. Its launch was periodically postponed, but it is still planned to implement it in 2019.
“There is no need to spend money on purpose to send a certain 'time capsule' into space,” says the astronomer, member of the RAS Council Bureau on Space, Academician Mikhail Marov. - And along the way with a research mission - why not? Even an ordinary flash drive with a message to aliens or future earthlings, placed on board a spacecraft, can be useful in this sense. However, if future alien archaeologists want to understand what happened to our planet after the apocalypse, they are unlikely to look for a story about this in near-earth or lunar orbit. Most likely, our "biographers" from other planets will conduct their excavations and research on the Earth itself."
Author: Vladimir Kozhemyakin
