The Second Ship

Notes on first contact and second thoughts

Twenty-four centuries ago, the former Athenian general Thucydides recorded the history of the Peloponnesian War, and in so doing, authored a foundational study of politics, military strategy, and human behavior.

In one episode of the great clash between Athens and Sparta, Thucydides recounts how the Athenians confronted the rebellious city of Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos. The revolt was suppressed by Athenian forces. Then came the question of punishment. The Athenian assembly debated the matter and reached a decision: every adult male in Mytilene would be executed, the women and children enslaved. A ship was sent across the Aegean carrying the decree.

The reasoning of the Athenian assembly was not simply vengeance. The Athenian empire depended upon obedience. Mytilene had revolted, and other subject cities were watching. Mercy could be mistaken for weakness. Decisive punishment would make an example of the Mytileneans, while demonstrating Athenian resolve.

The following day the Athenian assembly reconvened. The mood changed. The first decision now appeared overly stringent. Perhaps even counterproductive. More debate ensued. The argument that prevailed was less concerned with mercy than with strategic consequence; the Athenian assembly became convinced that the destruction of an entire people would diminish, not strengthen, relations with other subject polities vital for countering Sparta.

The problem was the first ship was already at sea. A second ship was immediately dispatched, and the crew — well-provisioned with wine and barely-cakes by Mytilenean ambassadors — rowed desperately across the waves. They arrived at Mytilene just after Paches, the commanding Athenian general, had read the first decree and was preparing to carry it out. Thucydides records that in the end the Athenians executed roughly a thousand prisoners whom Paches had sent to Athens. The rest of the Mytileneans were spared.

2,403 years later, another vessel was dispatched. This time the vessel was traversing the stars, not the sea, and it carried with it another message — from one civilization to another. Voyager 1 was launched from Cape Canaveral on September 5, 1977. It passed Jupiter, then Saturn, and continued outward. In 2012 it crossed the heliopause into interstellar space. It is now traveling away from the Sun at approximately 17 kilometers a second.

Bolted onto the side of the space probe is a 12-inch gold-plated copper disc sheathed in an aluminum cover. The Golden Record was intended as a message. A committee led by Carl Sagan assembled greetings, images and sounds to convey something of Earth and the beings who inhabit it. There are salutations in 55 languages. Sounds of surf and wind, birds and whales. Images of humans, animals, landscapes, mathematics and anatomy. Music from Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Chuck Berry and Louis Armstrong.

There is also a message from the President of the United States. Jimmy Carter described the record as a gift from a small and distant world. Humanity, he wrote, hoped one day to solve the problems it faced and join a community of galactic civilizations.

The message possesses the peculiar optimism of its time. The language, despite the enduring Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, is peaceful. Alien races are welcomed sight unseen.

There is another object from roughly the same period which presents humanity rather differently. It is buried 49 feet beneath Osaka, in Japan. The Time Capsule EXPO ’70 was assembled at almost the same historical moment as the Voyager Golden Record, and one of its two containers is to remain entombed beneath the grounds of Osaka Castle until the year 6970.

The capsule’s purpose is altogether different from the Golden Record. It does not seek to optimistically engage with alien life forms. Instead, it speaks to humans living five thousand years in the future. Precisely because of this, it is more measured, and less overtly hopeful.

The capsule’s 2,098 objects and records contain evidence of human achievement, science, art and ordinary life. But they also contain evidence of the harm and brutality humans are capable of. There is documentary footage of the Second World War: Pearl Harbor, Singapore, Iwo Jima, kamikaze missions, the bombing of Japanese cities, Hiroshima. There are records of dramatic political upheaval, and fervent anti-war demonstrations. Human suffering is made plain.

Among the buried objects one is particularly small. A fingernail. It belonged to Akihiro Takahashi, a survivor of the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima. Glass injured one of his fingers in the explosion. For years afterward a hard, black nail would repeatedly grow from it, then fall off. One of those nails was placed inside the capsule — 4,944 years from now, it may prove a more powerful means of understanding humanity than any history textbook.

The Golden Record and the Osaka capsule are different accounts of the same species. One presents humanity as it might wish to be encountered. The other preserves more of what humanity knows itself to be. 

Which raises the question of what message another space vessel, sent today, a half century later, would carry. Should the Golden Record be reconsidered? Should a second ship rocket off to catch Voyager 1 and replace its message?

Like the Osaka capsule, a second ship might carry a message reflecting the true character of the species. It might answer, however imperfectly, “who we are”, just as the Athenian assembly debated and answered, equally imperfectly, in 427 BC. Is the human race an image of Jane Goodall holding an ape’s hand, or is it the blackened fingernail? It is, it must be said, both of these things.

A fuller account of humanity might deliver a warning about the species that sent it. It could even give the senders reason to pause. What do the swirling eddies of human life reveal in 2026? Nearly 50 years after Voyager, something has changed. Humans have begun to create intelligence outside themselves. For the first time, questions about extraterrestrial life previously confined to science fiction now have an analogue, seemingly accelerating, on Earth.

Humans are also discovering, through their own increasingly unfathomable machines, that intelligence and shared interests need not be synonymous. Voyager assumed that encountering an advanced extraterrestrial civilization would be something to welcome. There is a certain nobility to that assumption. But the growing litany of rogue exploits by machine agents, even in controlled simulations, suggests a more contemplative approach.

And then there is the map. Inscribed on the cover of the Golden Record is a pulsar map by which an advanced intelligence could determine the location of the Sun. As well as the Earth. The message bolted onto the side of Voyager did not merely introduce human civilization. It gave directions to home.

Any civilization capable of finding Voyager, understanding it, and acting upon its invitation would likely possess capabilities far beyond those found on Earth. In the case of Mytilene, the Athenians decided another people’s fate. In an encounter with an advanced alien civilization, humanity might find it is Mytilene rather than Athens.

The effectual truth remains that it is the limit of human knowledge, rather than the extent, that impresses. According to research published in 2006 by Max Tegmark, Anthony Aguirre, Martin Rees and Frank Wilczek, there are 31 numerical parameters in a combined accounting of particle physics and cosmology. The ability to define and measure these parameters, however, does not explain their values. For example, humans know that dark matter and dark energy together likely account for roughly 95% of the universe’s matter-energy content. But their underlying nature remains largely beyond human discernment.

Moreover, there are, according to the best estimates of modern human astronomy, great numbers of potentially habitable planets. The Fermi paradox — the apparent contradiction between the expectation that other civilizations exist and the absence of confirmed evidence of them — reveals as much about the limits of human understanding as about the universe itself.

You must ask yourself this question: are the limits of human understanding necessarily shared by every organic or inorganic intelligence that may exist in the universe?

The Athenians sent one ship carrying a decision made in anger and hurried certainty. Then they reconsidered. A second ship followed carrying another decision — less absolute, more restrained, and more conscious of consequence.

Voyager carried a message of confidence, openness and hope. A second might carry more caution. And more truth. Or, after considering what is emerging here on Earth, perhaps nothing at all. Some messages need not be sent.

“I believe caution to be the first duty of sagacity.”

— Joseph Conrad, Chance