Message in a bottle.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IF YOU HAD ONLY ONE CHANCE TO CONTACT AN ALIEN CIVILIZATION?

"Nanoo-nanoo?" "Benihanas suck?" "I'm Rick James, bitch?" Well, 8 billion miles away and travelling at 27,000 mph, a little metal nugget that mankind drop-kicked into space is on its way, carrying such a message. The Pioneer 10 spacecraft was launched in 1972 to study Jupiter and has kept going ever since. Knowing the craft would continue on into space, conceivably for eternity, scientists fitted Pioneer 10 with a plaque (shown above) to signify mankind's hip-hop hug to any space critter that may find it. To all but about 20 people on the planet, the lines and dashes make about as much sense as Caine Gayle riding for Right Guard. The two circles in the upper-left illustrate the universal time/length 'yardstick' of a hydrogen atom (don't ask). And the star burst pattern represents the position of our Sun relative to 14 other "easily-detectable" pulsating stars in our Milky Way. Confused? Us, too. We used our dipshit decoder (Google) and found out that one little chicken-scratch scribble is an mf'ing MapQuest to Earth! As any sci-fi geek worth the Jar-Jar pajamas he sleeps in will tell you, aliens would only come here to devour and/or probe us, so why give them a road map? Don't worry, say the dudes with big brains; there's actually a mathematical formula that proves that any civilization capable of intergalactic travel would have already evolved past aggressiveness to avoid self-destruction. We'd show it to you but your head would explode if you saw it.

The most optimistic estimates have Pioneer 10 hitting other solar systems like ours in a few billion years, The primitive craft will be our cosmic cave painting. A message in a bottle. Nanoo-nanoo.