The video begins with Michael explaining that the image of Earth as seen from Saturn was taken by the Cassini spacecraft on July 19, 2013, and was the first image of Earth ever taken from space where some people on Earth were posing for it. He reflects on the smallness and fragility of our planet.
Michael then discusses his thoughts on the upcoming movie "You, Me and the Apocalypse," where the characters learn that a comet is scheduled to hit Earth in 34 days. He ponders what he would do if he found out that he had only 34 days left. His first priority would be to be with his family, but after that, he's not sure. He suggests that he would make a list of things to do in his last weeks of life, which he would then send far out into space away from Earth's impending vaporization. This list would contain information about all Earthlings, so if libraries, monuments, and YouTube videos were all destroyed, a record would still exist somewhere.
He then discusses how to write something for the future, considering that the message might be discovered by an audience that's completely different in language and senses. He mentions that the general consensus is to write messages in math and physics, as these are believed to be the same everywhere in the universe. He gives examples of how this has been done in the past, such as the Arecibo message written by Frank Drake, Carl Sagan, and others.
He also discusses the idea of a physical time capsule, like the one contained in the LAGEOS-1 satellite. This satellite contains a plaque designed by Carl Sagan, which includes the numbers 1 to 10 in binary and the arrangement of the Earth's continents 250 million years ago. It will serve as a message from us today to whatever happens to be alive or intelligent on Earth in 8 million years.
Michael then talks about satellites in geostationary orbits, which he compares to pyramids. These satellites are smaller than monuments built by past civilizations but are impervious to anything that might go wrong on the surface of our planet. He mentions EchoStar XVI, a communications satellite with a silicon disc containing 100 images of Earth and Earthlings.
He then discusses the Pioneer plaques and the Voyager Golden Records, which contain information about humanity and are designed to be found by other intelligent life forms. He explains how these records use hyperfine transitions to communicate distances and time, and how they include a map of our solar system and a Pulsar map.
Finally, Michael talks about the Library of Babel, a website that contains every possible combination of 3200 characters. He suggests that we could send this library into space, but he also acknowledges the difference between this program permuting something unknowingly and a person meaning it, intending it, and saying it because they wanted to with agency. He concludes by encouraging viewers to explore language and what can be said, and to consider what we should send out to space.
Here are the key facts extracted from the text:
1. The Cassini spacecraft took a picture of Earth from Saturn on July 19th, 2013 at 21:27 Coordinated Universal Time.
2. NASA gave the public advanced warning of when the image would be taken, allowing some people on Earth to pose for it.
3. The image is the first ever taken from space that some people on Earth were actually posing for.
4. The Arecibo message was written by Frank Drake, Carl Sagan, and others and was blasted towards the M13 star cluster in 1974.
5. The Arecibo message is composed of a semi-prime number of binary digits conveying information about humans and Earth.
6. The message should reach the center of the M13 cluster in about 25,000 years.
7. Earth has been broadcasting its radio and TV signals into space, creating a bubble of signals that is about 200 light-years in diameter.
8. Satellites in geostationary orbits could remain above Earth for billions of years, serving as a message to future civilizations.
9. The LAGEOS-1 satellite contains a plaque with the numbers 1 to 10 in binary and the arrangement of the Earth's continents 250 million years ago, today, and their estimated arrangement in 8.4 million years.
10. The satellite's orbit will be stable for about 8 million years, after which it will fall back to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere.
11. The Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft contain a golden record with information about humanity, including images, audio, and video recordings.
12. The record is made of gold-plated copper with an aluminum cover and contains some uranium 238, which can be used to determine how long ago the record was made.
13. The record contains 116 images, as well as audio and video recordings of humans, animals, songs, and greetings in 55 languages.
14. The Pioneer plaques are attached to Pioneer 10 and 11 and contain a map of the solar system, a diagram of a hydrogen atom, and a representation of the hyperfine transition unit.
15. The plaques are meant to convey information about humanity and Earth to any intelligent life form that might find them.
16. The Voyager 1 spacecraft is currently the most distant human-made object in space, moving at 17 km/s.
17. The Library of Babel is a website that contains every possible combination of English letters, commas, spaces, and periods, creating a vast library of text.
18. The library is organized into hexagon-shaped rooms, each with four walls of books containing five shelves with 32 volumes of 410 pages each.
19. The library contains over 10^5000 different pages, compared to only 10^80 atoms in the observable universe.
20. The library can be used to find the permanent location of any 3200-character text, including descriptions of birth, death, poetry, jokes, and lies.