Pioneer Plaque: Sagan designed infographic

The Carl Sagan-designed golden record (“Pioneer Plaque”) sent on 1970s Pioneer spacecraft is today considered an infographic. (An infographic intended to be read by space aliens. Which means that, continuing our IG series on data visualization, you can’t get much more far out that this visual.) The golden-plated engraving is designed to survive a billion years in space, quite a feet given that the Earth itself will be very different in a billion years (and was extremely different 1 billion years ago).

The Pioneer Plaque infographic was designed by Carl Sagan and drawn by Sagan’s then wife, an artist. It includes anatomically-correct drawings of humans (cropped-off due to IG community standards where this was originally published :). For this, Sagan was accused of sending smut into interstellar space. Most of the information in the Pioneer Plaque references the atomic timing of a hydrogen, used elsewhere as a unit of measurement (the same throughout space, so the same to space aliens).

The position of the Sun is given by referencing the timing of 14 space pulsars (in units of the hydrogen hyperfine transition, drawn on the plaque), and indicating the relative distance of the sun to these pulsars. (14 is used for redundancy, and also because the timing of pulsars will slowly change. One of the pulsar timings was slightly off.)

However, there are a number of data errors. Only the rings of Saturn are shown, since the rings of Jupiter and other planets was unknown in 1972 when the first Pioneer Plaque has launched. The Pioneer Plaque includes a diagram of the 9 planets in the solar system as understood in the 1970s, although under more modern definitions there are only 8 planets. [Update: Since we wrote this, strong evidence for a 9th planet, not Pluto, has emerged. There may be an ice giant in the distant far reaches of our solar system.] It shows Pluto as a planet, but Pluto has subsequently been reclassified as a dwarf planet (and many additional dwarf planets have subsequently been discovered). The same plaque was used in 1973 for Pioneer II, but it had a different orbit than shown.

In addition to sending out interstellar smut, Sagan was also accused of giving away our location to aliens. However, with the errors in the Pioneer Plaque, their job locating us might not be that easy. Sagan was given just 3 weeks by nasa to create the Pioneer Plaque infographic and alien communication intended to last 1 billion years in space. Quite a remarkable feat, given that it probably adequately gives our interstellar coordinates in a “universal” format.

A version of this article originally appeared as a photo post on our Instagram feed.

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