modern-arecibo

Generate images of the Arecibo message with a user-provided population and genome size.

Usage: modern-arecibo [OPTIONS]

Options:
      --population <POPULATION>  The number of humans. Default is the value used in the original 1974 message [default: 4292853750]
      --genome <GENOME>          The number of base pairs in the haploid human reference genome. Default is the value used in the original 1974 message [default: 4294441822]
      --output <OUTPUT>          Output filename [default: arecibo.png]
      --highlight-genome         Highlight the component that represents the human genome size
      --highlight-population     Highlight the component that represents the human population size
      --pluto-is-not-a-planet    Only depict the first eight planets in the solar system
      --scale <SCALE>            The size of each block, in pixels [default: 10]
  -h, --help                     Print help
  -V, --version                  Print version

Why?

The message encodes several numerical values, one of which was relatively inaccurate in retrospect. This tools regenerates the message with updated values. See this blog post for details.

Installation

cargo install modern-arecibo

Build

git clone https://github.com/jimrybarski/modern-arecibo
cargo build --release

Examples

Generate the original 1974 message:

modern-arecibo --output "arecibo-original.png"

Generate the message if it were being sent on February 1st, 2025:

modern-arecibo --output "arecibo-modern.png" --population 8098171861 --genome 3117275501

Deny the existence of Pluto:

modern-arecibo --output "arecibo-modern-no-pluto.png" --population 8098171861 --genome 3117275501 --pluto-is-not-a-planet