What Should We Say to Space Aliens?

"How We Present Ourselves to Aliens " Space.com (March 13, 2008)

Let's say we find space aliens, and can transmit something to them. What do we send?

A fascinating, if hypothetical, question.

Suggestions include the complete works of Bach (J.S., probably) and CAT-scans of human beings.

It's a good read.

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Now, a little philosophizing: The author makes the familiar assumption about 'highly evolved' civilizations: that they'll have "long ago conquered war, poverty, and disease ...." That 19th century optimism about what science and technology can do dies hard. (They thought they'd have poverty, disease, and war licked soon. Today, an opposite view seems fashionable - me, I think that people were human in Aristotle's time, are still human, and will be human two and a half millennia from now: Far from perfect, but not doomed, either.)