Arecibo Message: It will still take 25,000 years to reach its destinationNov 16 (AZINS) Google is celebrating sending of Arecibo message from the  Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in 1974 to globular star cluster M13. It was said to be sent with a hope that any extraterrestrial intelligence will receive the roughly three minute long message and decipher it to understand that they aren't alone.

It was an output of 1679 binary digits. In essence, it was a 'strictly symbolic event' intended to show that science can send a message to a cluster of starts which are 25,000 light years away. The frequency modulated radio waves was sent as a measure to show the power of the most powerful radio telescope at that time,.known after Arecibo. Hence the information sent was called Arecibo message.

The message consists of 1679 bits, arranged into 73 lines of 23 characters per line (these are both prime numbers, and may help the aliens decode the message). The "ones" and "zeroes" were transmitted by frequency shifting at the rate of 10 bits per second. The cluster of stars are near the edge of the Milky Way galaxy, and contains approximately a third of a million stars.