Cosmic Connection Read Online Free PDF Page B

nearly describes the state of mind of the writer than of the likely extraterrestrial recipients of the message. The raised right hand in greeting is historically connected with militarism, but in a negative way: The raised and empty right hand symbolizes that no weapon is being carried.
    For me, some of the most moving responses to the message are the works of art and poetry that it evoked. Mr. ‘Aim Morhardt is a painter of water colors of the desert and sierras who lives in Bishop, California, where, perhaps not coincidentally, the giant Goldstone tracking station, which commands Pioneer 10 , is located. Mr. Morhardt’s poem follows:

    Pioneer 10: The Golden Messenger.

    The dragon prows that cruised the northern seas,
    Questing adventure with the fighting clan;
    The gallant mermaid bows blown down the breeze
    On barquentine and slim-hulled merchantman;
    All the discoverers of unknown lands
    Gone in this winged age where naught remains
    Of new strange treasure on some foreign strand,
    So well-known earth, such charted routes and lanes.
    Now the new figurehead of man appears,
    Facing the vast immeasurable unknown,
    Naked, star-sped, beyond the call of years,
    Hand in hand, outward bound, and so alone.
    Go, tiny messenger of our your race,
    Touch, if you can, harbor in some far place.

    Mr. Arvid F. Sponberg, of Belfast, Northern Ireland, writes: “The voyage of ioneer 10–and the voyages of those like her–will have an effect that poets, painters and musicians will not long ignore. The existence of the idea of Pioneer 10 is proof of this. The scientific mission of course is of incalculable value and interest, but the idea of the journey is of even greater imaginative value. Pioneer 10 brings closer the day when artists must confront man’s new voyage as experience and not fantasy.”
    Mr. Sponberg composed for us a poem in sonnet form:

    New Odyssey

    Away, afar, beyond, bereft of kin,
    Wayward, wandering, far ranging vagabonds,
    Yearning, stardrawn, the Pioneers sweep on,
    Outward bound, adrift on the solar wind.
    A man, a woman, orphans of warm earth
    Or splendid voyageurs with golden sails,
    Or gypsies roaming ancient stellar trails,
    A caravan in quest of celestial berth.
    If, deep within cold interstellar space,
    Some fearful eye spies life on this raft,
    Will it perceive the heart within our craft,
    A pulsar pounding out the rhythms of peace?
    A spirit’s starburst pierces new frontiers;
    An Odyssey is our home; let us praise Pioneers!

    There is, of course, the possibility that the message on Pioneer 10 –invented by human beings but directed at creatures of a very different kind–may prove ultimately mysterious to them. We think not. We think we have written the message–except for the man and woman–in a universal language. The extraterrestrials cannot possibly understand English or Russian or Chinese or Esperanto, but they must share with us common mathematics and physics and astronomy. I believe that they will understand, with no very great effort, this message written in the galactic language: “Scientific.”
    But we may be wrong. One exploration of a total misunderstanding–and by far the most amusing such description–was made by the British humor magazine Punch in an article headlined, “According to the [Paris] Herald Tribune only one in ten of NASA scientists was able to figure out its message. So what chance have the aliens got?” Punch presents an opinion sampling of four representative extraterrestrials. They should be read with close reference to the illustration of the actual message:
    “Still, I must emphasise that we are only guessing at this stage and none of us has been able to explain the significance of the dots along the bottom. A suggestion that it could be a map of some metropolitan railway has been made to us, but we feel that this fails to take into account the arrowed position of a capsized yacht, or possibly a garden trowel. The inclusion of a naked blonde makes it more