Although it is not certain that they exist, the US space agency "NASA" seeks to communicate with aliens if they exist, by sending drawings of human figures representing males and females, in addition to scientific concepts that reflect some of what humans have reached, such as a drawing of DNA and a representation of gravity.
The message thread will be sent in binary code, and will include some basic math and physics concepts that can help determine the level of alien communication.
The plan came as part of NASA's new project, "Beacon in the Galaxy," which hopes that these messages will lead to some communication on the part of aliens, according to the "Sputnik" website.
The researchers think aliens might be just as excited to see what humans look like, just as humans would be curious to see if they match their appearance in science fiction films, green aliens with insect eyes.
The researchers explained that they chose to have their messages for space in binary code, because they are universally understood across all types of intelligence, and were encoded in the binary language of zeros and ones used in computing systems.
The Beacon in the Galaxy project, introduced by 11 researchers from a range of institutions, including NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is published this week in ArXiv, an open-access repository of scientific papers.
This is not the first time that space graphics have floated, as the plates on the Pioneer 10 and 11 missions contain similar graphics associated with their spacecraft.