One small doorstep for man: Cosmic mat welcomes aliens
ADELAIDE: It may look like an ordinary door mat, but its creators insist the conceptual art piece could encourage alien life to visit Earth — and help create a new kind of space archaeology.
Dubbed the “Cosmic Welcome Mat” it features swirls of red, sky blue, and violet against a black border, and is meant to convey a warm reception to all sentient life in the universe.
Experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats, who created the rug with space archaeologist Alice Gorman of Flinders University in Australia, aims to have similar mats placed all over the world.
Keats hopes eventually there will be a replica rug on “everybody’s doorstep,” adding that he is in early talks with NASA to have one placed at the International Space Station.
He says he has also been talking to the UN about a mat being placed at its headquarters in New York. An updated design of the mat is due to go on display at a Los Angeles gallery on Friday.
“I have been fascinated by Fermi’s Paradox: If there’s intelligent life throughout the universe, where is everybody?” Keats, also a conceptual artist, told AFP at the recent International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide.
Fermi’s Paradox is named after Italian-born physicist Enrico Fermi, the 1938 Nobel laureate who created the first controlled nuclear chain reaction.
His 1950 question “Where is everybody?” has since sparked debate about the contradiction between the probability of extraterrestrial civilizations and why humans have not encountered them.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of NASA’s first Voyager mission, where twin unmanned spaceships sent to explore other planets each carried a golden record and a record player.
Two years ago, British physicist Stephen Hawking launched “Breakthrough Listen,” the biggest-ever search for intelligent extraterrestrial life using some of Earth’s biggest telescopes.
In August it picked up 15 radio bursts from an unknown source, prompting debate over whether it could be extraterrestrial technology.