modern-arecibo

Generate images of the Arecibo message with a user-provided population and genome size.

Usage: modern-arecibo [OPTIONS]

Options:
      --population <POPULATION>  The number of humans. Default is the value used in the original 1974 message [default: 4292853750]
      --genome <GENOME>          The number of base pairs in the haploid human reference genome. Default is the value used in the original 1974 message [default: 4294441822]
      --output <OUTPUT>          Output filename [default: arecibo.png]
      --highlight-genome         Highlight the component that represents the human genome size
      --highlight-population     Highlight the component that represents the human population size
      --pluto-is-not-a-planet    Only depict the first eight planets in the solar system
      --scale <SCALE>            The size of each block, in pixels [default: 10]
  -h, --help                     Print help
  -V, --version                  Print version

Why?

In 1974, a group of scientists broadcast a message towards Globular Cluster Messier 13 with the Arecibo telescope. The message was crafted in such a way that any aliens receiving it would potentially be able to understand some basic information about humanity, including the size of the human genome. However, this was only known very approximately in 1974, and only in 2023 did scientists finally create a gapless reference genome. This tool recreates the Arecibo message with updated values for both the genome size and human population (configurable by the user). See this blog post for details.

Installation

cargo install modern-arecibo

Build

git clone https://github.com/jimrybarski/modern-arecibo
cargo build --release

Usage

Generate the original 1974 message:

modern-arecibo --output "arecibo-original.png"

Generate the message if it were being sent on February 1st, 2025:

modern-arecibo --output "arecibo-modern.png" --population 8098171861 --genome 3117275501

Exclude Pluto from the depiction of the solar system:

modern-arecibo --output "arecibo-modern-no-pluto.png" --population 8098171861 --genome 3117275501 --pluto-is-not-a-planet