We're so vain

 NASA wants to send nudes to space to attract aliens... 

This isn't the first time NASA has transmitted depictions of naked humans to the great beyond in hopes of luring the attention of aliens. Previously, plaques and golden records sent on the Pioneer and Voyager missions, each headed by famed astrophysicist Carl Sagan in the early 1970s, included illustrations of a naked man and woman, though much less detailed. 

"The launching of this 'bottle' into the cosmic 'ocean' says something very hopeful about life on this planet," Sagan concluded.

 

 

We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to selfawareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring. 

-- Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980) 

 

The human body averages 310 degrees Kelvin, the whole universe just 2.73

 

 

You are no surer, no,

Than is the coal of fire upon the ice,

Or hailstone in the sun.

-- William Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Act I, Scene 1

The sun will swallow the earth

Reported here:

According to experts from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA), the universe is only churning out half as much energy as it did 2 billion years ago, and is gradually approaching a state of entropy. The study confirmed something researchers have suspected for decades: the stars that populate countless galaxies are slowly burning themselves out. ...

The study, which was jointly led by Simon Driver and Andrew Hopkins, was an international effort that harnessed technology both on land and in space to study 200,000 galaxies and the energy they generated. Basically, it found that stars have lost roughly half their firepower over the last 2 billion years. ...

There is one type of cosmic body largely responsible for emitting galactic energy, and it's slowly losing steam, experts said. "Those emissions are dominated by stars," said Adam Burrows, professor in the astrophysical sciences department at Princeton University. The galaxy gas that creates these stars "is being depleted, and is not being adequately replenished." ...

[O]ne scientist contends it could be 100 billion years out before the universe fizzles. For perspective, the universe is just 14 billion years old, according to NASA. ...

Meanwhile, there might be more immediate challenges for the universe—and again, those too are much further on the horizon. "In 5 billion years, the sun will expand and swallow the Earth," said Driver. "In 10 billion years, our galaxy will merge with Andromeda." ...

Astronomers estimate there are more than 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, said David Kaiser, a physics professor at MIT whose work focuses on Early-universe cosmology.

But reported here previously:

[T]he heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. ... the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat . . ..

-- 2 Peter 3:10,12