What are the Pioneer plaques?
Q: What are the Pioneer plaques?
A: The Pioneer plaques were a pair of plaques that were launched into deep space on Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11.
Q: What was the same on both plaques?
A: The same image is on both plaques.
Q: What is included in the image on the Pioneer plaques?
A: The image is made up of many parts, including a drawing of a nude human female and a nude human male, a diagram of the change in spin of the electron of a hydrogen particle, a crude map of our solar system, and a star burst design.
Q: What is the purpose of the diagram of the change in spin of the electron of a hydrogen particle?
A: The diagram is meant to set up a universal unit of length and a universal unit of time for the rest of the image.
Q: What does the crude map of our solar system show?
A: The crude map of our solar system shows a spacecraft leaving the third planet, Earth.
Q: Why have there been negative reactions about the arrow on the map?
A: There have been negative reactions about the arrow showing the trajectory of the spacecraft because alien species may not understand the human concept of a line and arrow.
Q: What do the 14 binary numbers engraved along the lines of the star burst design signify?
A: The 14 binary numbers are distances and give the distance from the sun to 14 pulsars, but the distances are not in meters or kilometers, but in the universal unit of distance given by the hydrogen particle diagram. The 15th line gives the distance from the sun to the center of the galaxy.
