[Someone1234]

Storing that amount of information in a way that an unknown alien species would be able to read (even assuming technical expertise greater than our own) is a huge problem.

Keep in mind that they don't know our written or computational language and there's nothing about our technology that is inherently self-explaining/obvious.

Even the assumption that they'd use binary computers (rather than trinary, or other technology not based around electrical voltages) is open to debate.

[jerf]

An idea I've seen is including messages at several levels. At the outermost level you describe in very basic format how to build a magnifying glass. From there you have diagrams that are legible that describes how to build a microscope. From there you have more than enough space to describe the basics of what else is in there and to start describing your language. I'm thinking optical storage in a clear rock of some sort, as has already been prototyped.

If you assume motivated readers and human-level intelligence, you could end up with good results. It might take a decade or three, and a lot of mental firepower, but they could get there.

(The outer layer is the hardest, since our information density is lowest. Our "description of how to build a magnifying glass" might cover just the basic optics of curved glass and a very basic description of how to get to glass and how to curve it correctly, leaving a lot of the details up to the finder. After all, we did it without help. We're not so much trying to solve this problem for the finder as help them on their way.)

So, before jumping in to argue, remember I'm stipulating decades of dedicated effort by presumably an interested consortium of... whatever they are. I think we can safely stipulate an amount of effort at least as large as our society has dedicated to, say, Linear A and B, or the Voynich manuscript. I'm not trying to spec "Ugh wanders out of the jungle, sees our pretty rock, and personally has a 20th century civilization up and running in 10 years" or anything crazy.

[zaarn]

>I'm not trying to spec "Ugh wanders out of the jungle, sees our pretty rock, and personally has a 20th century civilization up and running in 10 years" or anything crazy.

Quite coincidental, there is currently an Anime running named "Dr. Stone" which is quite exactly about that; jump starting human civilizatio from the stone age to modern day as fast as possible. Atleast in-story it's been a few months and they're currently building radios and have a waterwheel generator.

[jerf]

Yeah, it's on my list. My strategy is generally to wait until I can just mainline the entire season, so I tend not to watch the latest seasonals, but it's definitely on my list when the season is done.

In Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep", a very advanced civilization in the outer galaxy that can't reach where we are for $REASONS has as a persistent hobby speculation on the fastest way to bootstrap advanced civilizations, assuming essentially-perfect knowledge of physics instead of blundering around.

[buboard]

> an unknown alien species

Not necessarily for aliens ... but why not keep a backup in a safe place outside the dangers of earthlings ?

OTOH, I think a sufficiently advanced alien intelligence will be able to decipher the information structures we use regardless of differences in technology. It's possible though there will be missing links in that archive, which will need to be supplemented with a primary secondary and high school curriculim.

[caleb-allen]

What about a satellite backup in orbit around earth? Maybe an elliptical orbit, coming around a few times a year or something

[0xdeadbeefbabe]

What format? I'm eager to know the solution to this non-problem.

[buboard]

pdf of course!

[caleb-allen]

/Godel, Escher, Bach/ has an interesting thought experiment about exactly this.

If one were to receive an object, how would it be indicated that there is a message embedded in there? Given that a intelligence could recognize that there was a message embedded, could it eventually be deciphered?