"If the satellite survives its launch, its long stay in space, its re-entry, and its landing, AND if there are intelligent inhabitants of this planet who manage to find KEO and open its titanium shell, what they will find inside is a compact but information-rich time capsule. The innermost sphere will hold photographs representing all cultures of people; an artificial diamond which encases a drop of human blood along with tiny samples of sea water, air, and soil; and an astronomical clock based on the positions of nearby pulsars which can be used to determine when the satellite was launched.This is really more of a symbolic, artys-fartsy project than anything else, and I don't think they'll be anyone here in 50,000 years - if so, they'll certainly not be anyone we'd recogonize as human. But if our decendents don't make it, maybe some other passers-by will find it.
Also inside will be something which will likely be strange to the visual organs of its discoverers: a set of specially-made glass DVDs, along with symbol-based instruction on how to build a DVD reader. Upon these DVDs will be encoded a contemporary 'Library of Alexandria'– an encyclopedic compendium of current human knowledge– and millions of personalized messages currently being collected from individuals all over the world."
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