Some ideas for sending messages to the next civilization.
1. Genetically modify as many wild plants and animals as we can to have a message encoded in their DNA, and release them back into the wild.
2. In areas that we expect to be geologically not much changed over the next 50 million years arrange concentrations of long lived radioactive materials in patterns that are obviously not natural. Encode a message in those patterns.
3. We could probably do something on the moon with nuclear weapons that could make a long fairly straight trench or series of parallel trenches that would be visible in telescopes and either be obviously non-natural or at least interesting enough to get them to go take a look.
Leave millions of metal spheres, cubes, tetrahedrons, octahedrons, dodecahedrons, and icosahedrons there which contain messages inside.
Google is telling me that any given spot on the moon gets hit be a meteoroid of ping pong ball size or greater about every 1000 years, so many of the messages will likely be destroyed over 50 million years, but maybe enough will make it.
BTW, is meteoroid the correct term? That's what Google's summary used and according to the dictionary definition as a small body that would become a meteor if it entered the Earth's atmosphere it would be correct but when we are talking about impacts on other planets or moons I'm not sure we should restrict meteor and meteorite to just meteoroids that are in or have hit after passing through Earth's atmosphere, respectively.
1. Genetically modify as many wild plants and animals as we can to have a message encoded in their DNA, and release them back into the wild.
2. In areas that we expect to be geologically not much changed over the next 50 million years arrange concentrations of long lived radioactive materials in patterns that are obviously not natural. Encode a message in those patterns.
3. We could probably do something on the moon with nuclear weapons that could make a long fairly straight trench or series of parallel trenches that would be visible in telescopes and either be obviously non-natural or at least interesting enough to get them to go take a look.
Leave millions of metal spheres, cubes, tetrahedrons, octahedrons, dodecahedrons, and icosahedrons there which contain messages inside.
Google is telling me that any given spot on the moon gets hit be a meteoroid of ping pong ball size or greater about every 1000 years, so many of the messages will likely be destroyed over 50 million years, but maybe enough will make it.
BTW, is meteoroid the correct term? That's what Google's summary used and according to the dictionary definition as a small body that would become a meteor if it entered the Earth's atmosphere it would be correct but when we are talking about impacts on other planets or moons I'm not sure we should restrict meteor and meteorite to just meteoroids that are in or have hit after passing through Earth's atmosphere, respectively.