science

Message to Altair

Message to Altair is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Message to Altair rather than just read about it. In short: Message to Altair (Japanese: アルタイルへのメッセージ), officially named CALL to the COSMOS'83, was an interstellar radio message sent from a radio telescope in Stanford, California, USA to the star Altair in 1983. The message was part of a collaboration with Weekly Shonen Jump, commemorating the publication's 15th anniversary.

Key takeaways

Message to Altair belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Message to Altair to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Message to Altair from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Message to Altair (Japanese: アルタイルへのメッセージ), officially named CALL to the COSMOS'83, was an interstellar radio message sent from a radio telescope in Stanford, California, USA to the star Altair in 1983. The message was part of a collaboration with Weekly Shonen Jump, commemorating the publication's 15th anniversary.

Transmission The message consisted of two parts: audio containing messages from children; and a set of 13 bitmap images produced by astronomers Masaki Morimoto and Hisashi Hirabayashi. The message was transmitted on August 15, 1983 from Stanford, California, USA, with each part being sent over 30 minutes. The 13 images show numbers, DNA, as well as the evolution of living things from simple organisms to humans. The images in the table below are recreations of the original images sent, which were actually 71 x 71 bits in size. This size was chosen because the product of 71, 71, and 13 is close to the number 216. Parts of the images are colour-coded for ease of reading:

Black: numbers, text Green: elements Blue: lengths

Search for a response Altair is approximately 17 light-years away, so the message would have arrived around the year 2000. Hirabayashi said that while the possibility is not high, if Altair has intelligent life, we could expect a reply from 2017 at the earliest. In 2023, Shinya Narusawa, who had known Morimoto before his death, asked the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) for cooperation in looking for any potential reply from Altair. The radio antenna at Usuda Space Observatory observed Altair for an hour at 10 p.m. on August 22, 2023. This also fell on Tanabata according to old calendar – legend states that it is the only day of the year that deities Orihime and Hikoboshi (represented by Vega and Altair respectively) are allowed to meet each other. Narusawa aims to continue his observations by collaborating with other research institutions.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Message to Altair

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Message to Altair claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Message to Altair before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Message to Altair ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Message to Altair

In research: Message to Altair appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Message to Altair in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Message to Altair is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1983 in science, Altair, Interstellar messages, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Message to Altair outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Message to Altair in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Message to Altair means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Message to Altair out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Message to Altair in simple terms?

Why does Message to Altair matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Message to Altair?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Message to Altair.