Discussion on:

Humanity's 'last pictures' in space disc

I am compelled to correct your wording in the caption of picture # 9, as it is a common misconception. The Earth does not "rise" on the Moon, the way that the Moon rises on Earth. The latter is due to the rotation of the Earth, but the Moon's rotation is locked into synchronicity with its orbit around the Earth - both taking roughly 28 days. Note that regardless of how it's illuminated, the Moon always presents the same face to the viewer on Earth.

This means that if you were at any point on the Moon where the Earth would be visible, it would simply hang in the same spot in the sky eternally.

The picture in question shot by Bill Anders on Apollo 8 did indeed simulate a "rising Earth", but that was because Apollo 8 was in orbit around the Moon. The Earth really just passed into view as the spacecraft travelled around our planet's satellite.

It may seem like a minor point, yes, but it perpetuates the misconception that you can have "Earthrise" on the Moon the way that we get a Moonrise here on Earth, and that just isn't so.

All I know of this project is what little bit is said here, so maybe I'm missing something. If the intent is to leave a lasting legacy of who we are/were in a time capsule, these are some pretty lousy images to leave. First, why black and white? Second, why so somber and morose? Third, why such unappealing images? The list of WTF goes on.....

As bahnjee stated above the combination of black & white images and such morose [from what we've seen] images hardly conveys anything of import. And if our civilization has been destroyed how would aliens have any point of reference to understand a dust storm or what it's impact would have been?

I think the concept may be valid but if that's what all the included images are like then it seems like a wasted effort. We are NOT impressed!

I have been getting the following error on every image in this series:
"Internet Explorer has modified this page to help prevent cross-site scripting"

Never had that before with IE on any of your articles. Hope its not a trend.

The other side of the coin is that if we screw this up and destroy ourselves the universe will look at this as another civilization that had a chance and blew it. No tears will be shed by the universe. Sobering thought.

I agree 100% with bahnjee. Those are a terrible choice of pics to leave behind. What a great idea totally wasted with poinltess images.

These in general, should keep anyone from wanting to visit us. How about a completed architectual wonder, a seascape or landscape, a pleasant picture of us.

Seriously?

I can get the point of leaving a legacy, leaving a trace of our history, leaving a time capsule that captures humanity in our stengths and weaknesses. I don't get the point of leaving a few unrelated images (100 - serious - to show what we have done with and two this planet?) that even we as humnans living here can't build our story from.

If this satellite is purely a time capsule, then why not put loads of useful data into it.

Spend the money building a "how to read human" kit and then leave the Encyclopedia Britannica.

The Voyager gold disks were a far more impressive event.

Is it April 1st?!
If any aliens find those pics and we still exist, they'll blow us up out of sympathy, to put us out of our misery.

Not that I think there's any point to leaving behind pictures in the first place, because there isn't, IMO... but, yeah, this has to be one of the worst collections of photos, period, even just to look at, let alone to leave behind as some kind of marker of humanity. This is more like an INSULT to humanity. Where are the Pulitzer Prize winning photos when you really need them? Holy freakin' crap!

While I agree with the others I must also agree with Ronatola. Aliens will probably kill us out of sympathy because of these pictures. "Here is a great idea, lets get the worst pictures we can find from the early 1900's and late 1800's and claim this was the peak of our civilization." Wow, really?

I am sure it is a misunderstanding, and we are not told the scope or idea for this initiative. As many people noted here, it is out of the question that this was supposed to be a human legacy for aliens or coming generations.
While with my artistically challenged brain I cannot see any reason for such shenannigans, there must be some other, "artistic" goal behind this.

I agree with everyone. These pics are terrible for this purpose, so we must be (I hope) misunderstanding the purpose.

I have to assume that, since it costs so freaking much to mount a project of this scope and then launch it into orbit, the artist was consequently reduced to using only free stock photos he scrounged from the Interwebs. It's the only explanation.

I doubt these are humanities last pictures, but they do make an impact. Still factually they are all fairly somber rather than showing the true diversiity of earth and the project feels more like it is aimed at humans than aliens.

If anyone comes to this pictures and doesn't have the context, would think something along the lines that this was a technologically advanced society that their main achievement was destroying itself... while this might hold some truth, I'd argue that this is not the whole truth... humanity is WAY MORE thant that... look at the faces of the orphans that experience the sea for the first time...
what's the point of putting the immigrants crossing the US-border? without any context, it is pretty hard to really know what's going on
I'd have to agree with other post that it is a pretty bad selection of pictures...

Other than the earth-from-moon pic, those are stupid pictures. If the point is to educate aliens about us, they're pointless. For example, you can't tell that the rocket is a rocket; it could be a building with a bright light at the base.

We could have included: pictures of major life forms representing the major phyla, xrays of H. Sapiens, family groupings, a modern weather satellite picture, a political map (aliens would realize the boundaries are artificial, not natural, and assume we divided up the world), and so on.

I agree with the three commenters above. To understand and appreciate the significance of these photos, one needs a strong understanding of human history, and, if one has that, why need these photos at all? A good set of photos, whether monochrome, which lasts, or pigment color, which has good lasting qualities, but not dye-based color, which fades quickly, needs to show a story all by itself, which this succession of photos fails utterly to do. An alien, not familiar with human history, would need a time-traveling telepathy machine to figure out this set.

It's highly improbable that any artificial satellite placed into orbit would remain there long enough for some other extraterrestrial civilization to find. Interstellar distances are immense. Travelling at anything other than a large fraction of light speed would take many many years -- long enough for the satellite's orbit to be decayed by the gravitational pull of Earth. The NASA Orbital Debris FAQ only projects that something in above 1000km orbit will stay there "...for a century or more". And that assumes there is enough station-keeping propulsion to last that long. [http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/faqs.html]

It would be far more useful to spend the launch funds building terrestrial archives spread around the globe. But even those would probably deteriorate long before being discovered.

An exercise in futility.

Why have they added a FLIR HUD image just before a JDAM 500lb guided bomb hits some Taliban?

In addition to all of the comments about poorly chosen photos, why black and white, the pictures make no sense out of context, etc. etc. Unless the person thinks we will destroy ourselves in the next couple of decades they are going to have to fly up there and add some more photos pretty often.

I also take exception to your description of picture 8. If that is a photo from a Predator drone along the U.S.-Mexico border than those are probably not simply migrants they are outlaws that are preparing to or have just illegally crossed the border into the United States.

Here's a couple of links to more info on this. The more I read about it, the weirder and more self-indulgent it seems.

http://lightbox.time.com/2012/09/19/the-last-pictures-travel-to-space-by-trevor-paglen/#1

http://njwv.wordpress.com/2012/10/18/the-last-pictures/

We were all playing in the sea, then the dust storms came, and we were attacked from the air, by something. So we built huge shelters inside of mountains to hide in...

I've found it fascinating how so much of the public seems to have embraced this idea of the end of the world coming soon. One has to wonder what is wrong with these people. This silliness is just another example of the general stupidity. We ARE all going to die but I'll bet it will be mostly one at a time from various causes.

Just for information's sake, I have lived, by my count, through the end of the world seven times.

"The end is near." --What, again?

All a bit pessimistic, don't you think? It's like writing your autobiography when you are two days old.