Is Somebody out There? Is It Sensible to Send Messages to Other Stars?

Take a look at the quiet night sky. How quiet is it? Don't let the beautiful twinkling stars deceive you! Somebody may be standing and "listening" to us from one of the stars you are looking at.

Should we listen only from them, and at the same time send no message, like—"I am here"—to them? Isn't there a paradox in this attitude?

Alexander Zaitsev thinks so, and he called it the Paradox of the Great Silence.

Is there a way of detecting messages flying-by over our atmosphere? Do we have the technology to capture every conceivable way of detecting space messages? And more than that, do we have the knowledge and the required wisdom to answer them? Is radio messaging the only way of capturing and communicating our ideas to other stars in our galaxy?

The first coded message sent to outer space.

Well, astronomers seem to be short-patience people. They seem to work on a day-by-day basis: the technology that matters is the one we have "today".  The first attempt, on 1962, was a three-word message sent to Venus in an experiment from the Evpatoria (Eupatoria)  Ukraine, using a deep-space radio-telescope coded using the Morse code pattern.

Later, in 1974, another message was sent from the Arecibo radio-telescope. This one was an elaborate message with information about the chemical constituents of the organic life here on Earth, and even the double helix structure of the DNA molecule.

Is it fair that a few astronomers reveal the chemical structure of our organic life? Isn't this another case of scientific arrogance, like the one of Sir Arthur Eddington, when he said he knew exactly how many protons are in the universe?

Then, should we listen only and stop sending messages? This is the Paradox of the Great Silence that stated the Russian astrophysicist.

But the "text-messaging" to the outer space didn't stop there. Then next, on 1999, from Evpatoria --again-- another message was sent, this one in a layout similar to a 23-page book.

What is written (coded) in this message to the stars? You won't' believe your eyes!

A single page from a "binary book" sent to space.

But that's not all, almost yesterday, on 2001, was sent another message, this one with the participation of three teens. The Teen-Age-Message (TAM) is—without a doubt—the most sincere and original of all of them.

Why?