| KEO, the winged satellite, will
share our messages 50,000 from now KEO, named "project of the 21st century" by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), is a satellite that will be launched at the end of the year 2005. The plan is that it will orbit our planet for 50,000 years, and then it will re-enter our atmosphere and land, and our descendants will discover it. Every single person all over the planet is being invited to include a personal message of 6,000 characters or less to the people of the future on it. The messages won't be edited at all and will be included as is. This universal appeal for messages will end on December 31, 2003. [To write and send your message to the people of the future, go to www.keo.org/uk/pages/message.php] KEO is a non-profit undertaking that is being realized solely through the benevolent contributions of several professionals, individuals, enterprises and institutes who pool in their knowledge free of any charge. Purely for symbolic reasons is KEO adorned with two big wings. This image will appeal to the human imagination as a mythical figure of a bird that is the messenger of the people of the 21st century. To allow its wings to flutter, KEO uses a leading-edge technology "shape memory alloys." These are metallic alloys that are able to assume different shapes according to different temperature ranges and revert to their original shapes each time they are brought back under their original temperature. In this case, the difference in temperature between shadow and sunlight is exploited, so that during its orbit around Earth, KEO will spread its wings when it is touched by the sun's rays and fold them when it re-enters the Earth's shadow. No form of energy is needed to make KEO's wings function. KEO will be injected into a circular or elliptical orbit situated at an altitude of several thousands of kilometers. After a couple of years in orbit, KEO's unprotected wings will be shed, leaving the core sphere to continue its journey alone in space. Each day, during its long voyage around the Earth, KEO's orbit will gradually decay bringing the satellite closer and closer to its native land. As KEO approaches the end of its long journey, its momentum will be checked by the dense layers of the Earth's atmosphere as it descends below 120 kilometers in altitude. It will then enter the final and critical phase of its return flight. Some 20 minutes before landing, KEO will announce its arrival to our future descendants in the form of a shooting star, emitting sparks of radiant light that will be brighter than those of a natural star. Their luminosity will be continuous and their intensity will be strong. Some two minutes before it lands on the soil, KEO's titanium and tungsten shields will disintegrate under the effect of the heat accumulated during its passage across the layers of the dense atmosphere. KEO will be equipped to resist this phenomenon and will thus trigger off an ionization that shall release a steam of minute and illuminated particles. Our future descendants will witness a flash of artificial northern lights in the sky, a strong glow, like a signal...they will be alerted of KEO's return. Aboard KEO, our future descendants will find a glass plate engraved with portraits of men, women and children. This mosaic of faces will represent the current diversity of the ethnic groups, which with time and interbreeding will have blended to form a kaleidoscope of uniform colors. A sequence of double helix DNA unique to Homo Sapiens Sapiens as we exist today will also be engraved (would we too undergo genetic changes?). Also included will be: • The diamond within -- As KEO's discoverers continue their exploration, they will come across a diamond with four inclusions made of tiny spheres of gold. The first sphere will hold a drop of water from our oceans, the second will contain a pinch of fertile soil and the third will enclose a sample of the air from the atmosphere surrounding us. More precious than the diamond itself are these terrestrial elements that, in their current composition, make life possible on Earth. The fourth sphere of gold will protect a small drop of human blood, chosen at random from among the different human groups, to symbolize our common genetic human signature. • The sidereal clock -- To allow our future descendants to find out the launch date of KEO, a second glass plate engraved with accurate astronomical data will be installed. The data will show the position of the planets of the solar system as on the launch date of KEO. Depending on the level of knowledge attained by our future descendants, they will be able to calculate that KEO was launched into orbit some 50,000 years ago (as the same planetary configuration is only repeated every 200 million years). • Library of knowledge -- Our descendants will then uncover a stack of engraved glass disks that will form a treasure chest of all our knowledge as it exists today: a catalogue of the flora and fauna, diversity of the arts, fundamental texts of our religions, geopolitical situations, economic agreements etc, ...all this will be exhibited by way of texts, pictures, video clippings and sound. • Messages from the 21st century -- The most important gift of them all is a second stack of engraved glass disks that will contain a fresco of our messages; messages that every man, woman and child of the 21st century is invited to send to our future descendants. To guide our descendants towards the significance of our messages, information immediately intelligible to the eye will be provided to them in the form of holograms and/or diagrams on each side of the glass disks. Around 200 drawings and diagrams shall be made available to them. They will also come across signs representing some of the invariants used in the past by numerous civilizations such as those indicating water, houses, etc., accompanied by their translation into several languages. They will also find a peculiar glass disk, engraved analogically (like an old vinyl record) at their disposal. Next to this they will find a tuning fork, a miniature horn, a record needle and a diagram showing how the disks must be rotated in order to extract their contents. As soon as the frequency emitted by the miniature horn corresponds with that of the tuning fork, our descendants will hear human voices speaking the principal languages of our days as well as melodies of the music of our times. The subsequent disk will contain exactly the same information but this time digitally coded and engraved. Our descendants will then have to begin their work of deciphering and decoding. Like the discoverers of the Rosetta Stone, our descendants will learn that the glass disks enclose real meaning and not some esoteric symbols. Their task will be all the more complex because, unlike the clearly visible engravings on the Rosetta stone, the DVD images and the micro-millimeter engravings encoding our alphabets will be imperceptible to the naked eye. However, we will furnish them with technical diagrams for constructing a DVD disk reader, which will enable them to access the visual representation of our messages. These plans will be presented to them in the form of diagrams engraved on the faces of several glass disks aboard KEO. Part of the goal of the KEO project is that humanity today be affected by the messages that are being sent. All the messages, after being made anonymous, will be made available for consultation. Slowly and gradually as the messages arrive, they will be stocked in secured databases that will be made accessible via the Internet after the launch of KEO during the year 2005. The idea is that by sharing each others' experiences, by understanding each others' aspirations, we can know each other better and thus live together in harmony. At the same time, linguistic analysis will be conducted on all our messages, cartographies of meaning and contents will be drawn and circulated as soon as 2005. This will enable Foundation KEO to launch an international debate on the kind of world we want to build together. With the emergence of this new vision towards the human community of the 21st century, KEO aspires to create a world that is more humane. KEO is the reaction of a French artist and scientist, Jean-Marc Philippe, in response to the contemporary world. In one of his recent conferences, Jean-Marc Philippe notes: "...We live in a world today where man has, for various reasons, forgotten to reflect on his actions: problems in daily life, work pressure, keen competition, scattered information, the necessity to earn his livelihood...sufficient reasons to give us the impression that the "cacophony" we hear in the world today is because we are aimlessly drifting about..." "...I have therefore looked for a metaphor that can be shared by everybody without any distinction of culture, religion and age...a metaphor that incites each one of us to spend some moments in reflection, free from the anxieties of daily life...a metaphor that incites us not only to go beyond our span of life and time, but also to take into consideration the duration of the line of evolution of our species....." "...From here was born KEO, a universal invitation to reflect, an invitation to learn more about each other, an invitation to dream about the world and the destiny of our human species, and, by means of analyzing all our messages, an invitation to contribute towards a world-wide debate intended to "better" consider the world which we from now on want to build together...." Messages from us The following are examples of messages that have been provided: "...Extra-terrestrials. My name is Gregory...I don't know if you keep track of your age, but I am eleven years of age. I may be just a small boy, but I have many things to say. I wanted to know if you had the custom called love. I don't know if you have families, nor do I know you need sentimental bonds to breed or not to. Just in case, let me fill you in. Whether it is a family love, or a sentimental bond, love is the best feeling you could ever have...." Gregory, 11, USA "...I am as yet too young to have made any true impact on the world, but I give you my solemn promise that I will try to win some victory for humanity during the course of my life. Whether my name will be remembered past the year 5000, much less 50,000, I cannot know, but I hope that I will do something beneficial enough that it will be..." Alexander, 16, Germany "...I just want the future to be a wonderful place to live. Peaceful, calm, no pollution, no war, no unhappiness. Where every living thing are friends and all live together. That's all for my message... Oran, 12, Thailand "...The real voyage of a new discovery begins not with visiting new places, but in seeing familiar landscapes with new eyes..." Leonid, 21, Israel "... So I have a prayer for our future generations: That you treat your children like the precious gifts that they are. Teach them to respect and love themselves, teach them to love, and to be tolerant of each other. We do that by example, because we have learned that children imitate the behaviors that are presented to them, educate them, give them hope, and keep them healthy. Yes, every child is worth the effort..." Teresa, 46, USA "... I'll tell you how to make hamburgers. You need: 1 pound ground lean beef 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon pepper 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 4 tomato slices (if you like them)..." Joshua, 10, Canada "Dear Intelligent Beings of 50,000 Years Hence, ...I hope you've had time to develop kindness and consideration among individuals, families, tribes and nations, the lack of which has caused most of our misery...." Rod, 71, Retired Foreign Correspondent, USA |
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