r/vexillology • u/Goonabaz Minnesota • Pansexual • Apr 07 '26
OC My version of a pan-humanity flag, feat. the Voyager pulsar map
Other versions of this i've seen have used super low quality rips of the design, and weird/bad colors. The blue is inspired by the UN, as well as the ocean.
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u/NisERG_Patel Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26
You're missing the small hydrogen molecule that defines what those dashes are supposed to mean.
Edit: Fixed a spelling error.
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u/alexaugustsunny Canada • Whiskey Apr 07 '26
Idea: that can go on to the reverse side
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u/mrguym4ster Apr 07 '26
similar idea: that's actually the war flag (like how the phillippines swaps the red and blue in its flag when its at war)
the hydrogen being a reference to hydrogen bombs
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u/Informal-Most1858 Apr 09 '26
I love the idea in fictions that humans are some sort of extremely strange and scary creatures lol Either they don't get approached because aliens know they are gonna take a beating or they have made contact and got scared lol I don't remember but I think there is a subreddit for this, Humansarespaceorks or something
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u/Yws6afrdo7bc789 United Federation of Planets Apr 08 '26
Probably for the best. Should something like this ever be used to identify ourselves to an alien group, I'd prefer our map to the motherworld be indecipherable.
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u/NisERG_Patel Apr 08 '26
Remembrance of Earth's Past tells me, you're right and it's a genius move to not add that.
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u/Asterose Apr 09 '26
Well, it's already too late. The only way would be to literally travel back in time and construct something that would, for millions to billions of years, unfailingly conceal our planet from all directions across much, perhaps all of, the electromagnetic spectrum, as Earth streaks around the Milky Way as it shoots through space. The light and other signs of our planet have been traveling in every direction for all of Earth's existence. Any species capable of sending harm to Earth directly will have detected us unless time travel shenanigans were involved.
When we look up at Castor and Pollux, we're seeing Castor as it was 52 years ago and Pollux as it was 34 years ago--and vice-versa for what aliens there would see if they looked at our solar system.
Hmm, well that does mean we have one alrernative to traditional time travel: faster than light travel of some kind (including wormholes as an option) where we somehow detect the threat but can travel faster to disable it than they can travel to counter our counter-which still requires us to have technology that they, despite being able to endanger Earth from afar, for some reason do not.
Isaac Arthur's a delightful watch/listen for these kinds of subjects, here's the video about the Hidden Aliens/"hiding our planet/existence from everybody else" episode!. You don't become the president of the American National Spade Society without being a great communicator and hard science-backed educator on this stuff, sp he's very credible.
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u/Asterose Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
There's no hiding us unless you can literally time travel far enough back and then construct something that will unfailingly obscure the signs of life and intelligence on our planet for at least a few million years across much if not all of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Which means either there's now alternate timeline where Earth is hidden, or it's got to be a causal self-existing loop. The light and other signals from our planet have been traveling for billions upon billions of miles in every direction as we streak through the galaxy as it wheels through space.
Every star and exoplanet we see, we are seeing as it was [distance] light years ago. When we look up at Castor and Pollux, we're seeing Castor as it was 52 years ago and Pollux as it was 34 years ago--and vice-versa for what aliens there would see if they looked at our solar system. Any civilization capable of sending harm to Earth would be able to detect us humans even earlier than where we were at 52 years ago.
Well, I guess that means there is one other way besides traditional time travel to counter an attack: invent some form of effectively faster than light travel to reach and counter their threat before they can counter our counter. Which requires us getting technology that they, despite being a danger from afar to Earth, do not.
Isaac Arthur's a delightful watch/listen for these kinds of subjects, here's the video about the Hidden Aliens/"hiding our planet/existence from everybody else" episode!. You don't become the president of the American National Spade Society without being a great communicator and hard science-backed educator on this stuff, so he's a credible and delightful source.
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u/VonSchaffer Apr 07 '26
This image appeared on Pioneer 10 & 11 as well. And New Horizons. So every probe we have sent out of our Solar System has this pulsar map.
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u/MajaLovesMashojo Apr 07 '26
17776 mentioned
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u/Sea_Guidance_2054 Alberta Apr 07 '26
How so?
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u/MajaLovesMashojo Apr 07 '26
you gotta read it
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u/Sea_Guidance_2054 Alberta Apr 07 '26
Oh i did part of it, now i remember, aren’t they the two opening characters or something
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u/skydisey Apr 07 '26
Nah it's just dox-card
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u/Aggressive_Size69 Apr 09 '26
presumably anyone who sees this flag already knows where earth is
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u/skydisey Apr 09 '26
If they understand what this shit it
Honestly, I don't know how to read this, only know this is distances from pulsars or sorta
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u/Aggressive_Size69 Apr 09 '26
i was saying that if this flag was used for humanity in interstellar politics, anyone who sees the flag would already be aware of the political body where the flag is used, and this political body would probably have to be aware of where its members are.
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u/Asterose Apr 10 '26 edited Apr 10 '26
There's already no hiding us from lifeforms capable of sending danger to Earth anyway. You'd either need time travel ((and then a way to consistently obscure Earth across multiple to all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum for millions to billions of years) or to somehow fly faster than light to intercept the threat. And faster than light travel is one of the less likely science fiction tropes to become reality. Wormholes stand a slightly better chance but that isn't saying much.
When we look up at Castor and Pollux, we're seeing Castor as it was 52 years ago and Pollux as it was 34 years ago--and vice-versa for what aliens there would see if they looked at our solar system--because we're that many light years away from those stars. Atmospheric signatures of us industrializing and altering our planet started up in the 1800's, and signs of life have been clear for billions of years as far as any species technologically capable of sending danger to us goes.
Isaac Arthur did a great episode on the Hidden Aliens idea. On the upside, if we're sufficiently spacefaring, attacking a planet is a lot more difficult than sci-fi, borrowing from historical sieges, depicts!
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u/Asterose Apr 10 '26 edited Apr 10 '26
It's already too late. When we look up at Castor and Pollux, we're seeing Castor as it was 52 years ago and Pollux as it was 34 years ago--and vice-versa for what aliens there would see if they looked at our solar system. Signs of us industrializing started up in the 1800's, and signs of life here have been detectable for billions of years. Thr only ways to hide Earth would be traditional time travel or some way of traveling faster than light to get ahead of the electromagnetic spectrum-which both mean we'd probably have to have technologies the aliens capable of dooming us from afar don't have.
Isaac Arthur did a great episode breaking down the Hidden Aliens idea and how difficult it would actually be to pull off.
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u/Copperstein Apr 07 '26
Great flag. From my understanding, the binary is encoding the frequency of the pulsar. While the pulsar doesn't move that much over time, the frequency can change and the binary is also an indicator of time. So you could update the flag binary part to reflect a specific date ? For instance there is an updated version for 2026 In this article: https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/recalculating-pulsar-map-21st-century
So what "date" should be included in a pan humanity flag ?
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u/IlovePistolShrimps Apr 07 '26
10th of december 1948, the date declaration of human rights happened
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u/ZuP Apr 07 '26
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u/No-Nobody-464 Apr 09 '26
It was not invented in brazil 13000 years ago bro
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u/ZuP Apr 09 '26
“Invented” isn’t the right word but it’s close. Perhaps “discovered” is more apt. Check out this episode on PBS: https://www.pbs.org/native-america/episodes/from-caves-to-cosmos
Here’s the exact timestamp in YT if you don’t pay for PBS: https://youtu.be/Alrn_G6GKxo?t=2158
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u/No-Nobody-464 Apr 09 '26
Interesting
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u/ZuP Apr 09 '26
Isn’t it though?! It’s a Farmers Almanac too, showing the animals you would expect in each season.
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u/Vindaloovians Apr 08 '26
Not exactly related to the flag, but I assume looking at the decay of the plutonium-238 power source of the probe would give an approximate date.
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u/ilovemicronesia Apr 07 '26
I made a very similar one for my KSP save but it had the wreath thing on the right side, but yours is much better!
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u/JakeyMcG Apr 07 '26
Wait can I see your version? I might steal it for my own ksp save (currently using the flag from Lego space)
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u/VideoGamesAreDumb Apr 07 '26
I’ve used the voyager pulsar map in designing stuff a lot.
It’s one of my favorite “things”
I love it. 👍
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u/SpaghettiBeam Apr 07 '26
user background checks out
(I wasn't stalking just getting a closer look at the hotdog man)
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u/Goonabaz Minnesota • Pansexual Apr 07 '26
!wave
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u/FlagWaverBotReborn Apr 07 '26
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u/the_useless_cake Transgender • Puerto Rico Apr 07 '26
But there’s no wind in space! :(
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u/Goonabaz Minnesota • Pansexual Apr 07 '26
we'll just have to put it on an undulating rod, i guess...
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u/PSYisGod Apr 07 '26
I remembered hearing that the pulsar signals that were on the Voyager are actually incorrect or at least outdated as it was made during the time when pulsars were first being discovered so I've always wondered how the newly updated pulsar signals would look compared to the Voyager one.
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u/Leuris_Khan Apr 07 '26
very impressive
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u/DJCoopes Western Australia Apr 07 '26
Let's see Paul Allen's space flag
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u/Asterose Apr 10 '26
Look at that subtle off-white coloring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh, my God. It even has a watermark.
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u/Karfa_de_la_gen Apr 07 '26
This is a space equivalent of “blue means water and green means forests/land”.
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u/Achilles-Angler Apr 07 '26
Thickening up the lines would help it not just look plain blue at a distance
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u/c0ns10vs_c0rps3 United States • Pansexual Apr 07 '26
I like this, actually. I think it's cute! However i do agree with some of the other comments, from afar the lines would be hard to see. So thickening the lines would make it more recognizable!
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u/C-Gravedigger-M Apr 08 '26
En mi opinión debería suponer un pequeño punto azul pálido en el centro de donde convergen las líneas. Así se entiende que ahí esta nuestro pequeño punto azul. Además de ser un bonito recordatorio de la foto homónima.
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u/Goonabaz Minnesota • Pansexual Apr 08 '26
Yeah, if i were to make another version I would make the lines more stylized as well as this!
traducción automática:
Sí, si fuera a hacer otra versión, haría que las líneas fueran más estilizadas, ¡además de esto!
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u/Minute_Juggernaut806 Apr 07 '26
what does this mean?
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u/Guaymaster Argentina Apr 07 '26
It's the location of the solar system in relation to 14 pulsars (special neutron stars that rotate with extremely exact periods). The period of each pulsar is encoded using those little lines, they represent the time interval for a hydrogen atom to transition between its two lowest energy states. Of course, it's impossible to decode like this without the actual Pioneer plaques or the Voyage Golden Records that have all this stuff in the same place.
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u/Minute_Juggernaut806 Apr 07 '26
1) what do they rotate around, and holy shits this map is so scifi coded
2) i didn't understand those small lines, how does they related with time period and time interval of hydrogen atoms to transition. also is the electron transition in the hydrogen atom inside each pulsar?
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u/Guaymaster Argentina Apr 07 '26
1) On their own axis.
2.a) Pulsars, and neutron stars as a whole, aren't compossed out of ordinary matter like the Sun or Earth: they are super-dense objects of roughly 20 kilometers in diameter with about 1 and a half times the mass of the Sun. They are so dense that every proton and electron inside merged into neutrons (hence the name), so no, there are no hydrogen atoms inside a neutron star/pulsar.
2.b) So, as I said this image comes from the Pioneer 10/11 plaques, and then the Voyager Golden Records. It was done kind of tongue in cheek as they knew aliens would never actually pick them up, but the idea is that they are messages for alien civilizations to be able to find us. This runs into the problem that aliens will of course not know what the fuck is a kilometer... nor a second for that matter. But there's something a sufficiently advanced civilization will know: the hyperfine transition of hydrogen, the most common element in the universe. This transition is 0.704 nanoseconds long, so we can use this as the "unit of time" to talk with hypothetical aliens. Even if for them this period is called 1511032145 glorplilorks we can both agree we're talking about the same thing. Anyhow, now that we have a unit of time, we can say "this pulsar has a period of 0.388 seconds". This is unique to each pulsar, so they can be identified from other perspectives, allowing an alien race to triangulate where the Sun is.
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u/Minute_Juggernaut806 Apr 07 '26
So these 20km wide things rotate in just 0.388 sec, just to confirm?
Also if you read isaac asimovs foundation series a similar concept appears which was pretty cool where protagonists need to decipher a similiar artifact in the last book foundation and earth
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u/Guaymaster Argentina Apr 07 '26
Yup! It's like 30% the speed of light in angular speed. They are fast bois.
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u/Informal-Most1858 Apr 09 '26
Geez, do they expire like normal stars too?
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u/Guaymaster Argentina Apr 09 '26
No, they are the stellar remnant of supermassive stars after they go supernova. They are objects that could not quite become black holes.
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u/Informal-Most1858 Apr 09 '26
Are there such things as proton stars?
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u/Guaymaster Argentina Apr 09 '26
Well it depends on what you mean. You could consider normal stars to be proton stars, as they are mostly made out of hydrogen. But they are electrically neutral thanks to the electrons they have around. A star solely made out of protons would be impossible I think, as they are all positively charged.
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u/yago2003 Apr 07 '26
How long until this becomes significantly outdated? thousands or millions of years?
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u/Asterose Apr 10 '26
If it's the original one from the Voyager probes, it's already outdated since we've learned about and discovered more about Pulsars since the 79's.
The good news is that aliens that could communicate and/or interact eith us wouldn't need a pulsar map to find us.
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u/Dyslexic_Alex Apr 08 '26
Thanks for uploading this! I've been looking at getting a tattoo of it. Where have you found the highest quality version?
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u/Natieboi2 Apr 08 '26
Wasn't this pulsar map proven to actually not lead to earth?
Still a nice map though
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u/Expensive_Compote977 Israel Apr 08 '26
While this is a pretty good earth map it is not good at being pan humanist
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u/Sad_Pear_1087 Apr 11 '26
Too complex, pan-humanity needs to be easily reproducible.
Looks like a sea urchin.
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u/Quiet-Wing5230 Apr 12 '26
Beginner mistake never let the enemy know where you are
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u/mrpoovegas Apr 30 '26
Joke's on the enemy: which pulsars should they be referencing, where and from what point of view? 😏
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u/T_Jamess Apr 07 '26
Very cool, doesn't mean anything without the hydrogen atom key
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u/servonos89 Apr 07 '26
Surely even without it another intelligence would clock on to it relatively quick, considering Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and they’d only have to count to the atomic number of 1.
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Apr 07 '26
[deleted]
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u/OrangeSpaceMan5 Apr 08 '26
I mean the vast majority of humans are not scientists , if whatever civilization finds it has a scientist equivalent or something resembling it then they can figure it out
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u/Asterose Apr 10 '26
Yeah, and it'd take technology at least as good as ours to even detect the probes as they fly through space, let alone to catch and retrieve one. The probes are nowhere near durable enough to crash into a planet and still have the records be salvagable, so aliens would have to be able catch the probe in space.
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u/servonos89 Apr 08 '26
any civilisation advanced enough to receive it knows what hydrogen is. It’s why it was picked - the elements are universal and therefore a great foundation for communication
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u/Asterose Apr 10 '26 edited Apr 10 '26
The probes are not durable enough to survive atmospheric entry or crashing into a big rock. They will soon be effectively invisible as cold, dead, unlit objects the size of a car careening through incomprehensibly vast and empty space. Even "find 1 very specific grain of sand by searching all the beaches on Earth" doesn't do it justice.
Any species finding either of the probes and able to retrieve the golden records from them would already be significantly more advanced than we are. They'd need the ability to detect such a practically invisible object and then also manage to get a craft to fly fast enough to catch and retrieve it (so, needs to fly faster than 56,000 km/hr for Voyager 2, or 61,000 km/hr for Voyager 1). At that point you know about hydrogen, binary, and pulsars.
Hell, the map is also already not actually usable because our knowledge of pulsars has changed since the 70's. (Don't worry though, intelligent enough life wouldn't need a map to detect us, and it's already too late to hide) Isaac Arthur there has a whole series speculating about all kinds of possible lifeforms and communicating with thrm, it's a lot of great listening. He's the president of the National Space Society thanks to being well-grounded in real science and a great educator who is very fun to listen to if you're into this stuff.
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u/maya-ongezellig Apr 07 '26
hey i never thought of this this is such a cool idea, i feel like in practical use it could have the binary bits removed and replaced with just solid lines. but then again the binary details do look cool, i dunno.
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u/mrguym4ster Apr 07 '26
I actually really like this flag, it has quite a lot of meaning and symbology, and follows pretty much every "flag rule", great job, OP!