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6 Animated GIFs Lone Signal Should Beam Into Space

Its mission: To boldly go where no dancing baby has gone before.

lone signal big

Every once in a while, humanity decides to send a document of its achievements into space on the off chance that it might get picked up by another form of intelligent life. In 1974, NASA beamed a binary encoding of a double helix. In 2008, they beamed a recording of “Across The Universe” by The Beatles. Today, the interstellar communication company Lone Signal will be beaming an animated GIF of a random white guy scratching his mostly-bald head into space. No offense to that dude, but is that really the best we can do as a species when there are so very many spectacular GIFs wandering about the Internet?

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Here’s the GIF we’re referring to, entitled “Humans watching Digital Art.” Apparently it will be beamed in the direction of Gliese 526, which is 7.6 light-years from Earth, and has been identified as a potentially habitable solar system.

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Apparently this GIF was given to Lone Signal by conceptual artist Kim Assendorf. And don’t get me wrong, it’s delightful and all, but I don’t really think that “guy looking confused at art” is the best representation we can provide of an entire planet and all. Here are my suggestions:

 [geekovision id=252]

Luckily, Lone Signal has announced that they’ll be providing customers opportunity to send tweets in to space — bur not for fee, of course — so if you’ve got your own idea for what our future alien overlords will see of us, you can send it up yourself.

(Kim Asendorf via The Verge)

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