The Beauty of Diagrams

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Marcus du Sautoy

Michael Waterhouse

Harry Bell

The Beauty of Diagrams: Episode 6: Pioneer Plaque

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Pioneer Plaque

Episode 6

Episode 6: Pioneer Plaque

BBC Four - The Beauty of Diagrams, Pioneer Plaque

The story behind a diagram placed on a space probe to explain mankind to alien life.

Marcus du Sautoy explores the story behind the Pioneer Plaque, a diagram on board a space probe which would reveal facts about the Earth to extraterrestrial life.

Series in which mathematician Marcus du Sautoy explores the stories behind some of the world's most familiar and influential scientific diagrams.

When the unmanned space probe Pioneer 10 took off from Cape Canaveral in March 1972, it had on board a remarkable diagram. The Pioneer Plaque was designed to communicate fundamental facts about Earth and its inhabitants to life on other planets. In carefully engraved graphic images and mathematical symbols, the plaque would reveal the Earth's location in the solar system and show extraterrestrial intelligent life what human beings looked like.   

But how could one single diagram do all that? What do you put in and what do you leave out? With its naked human figures, the plaque sparked arguments amongst feminists and conservatives. 

So was it, in the end, a great intellectual game or was it the most enterprising, artistic and scientific diagram of all time, perhaps even the ultimate diagram?

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Exploring the stories behind the world's most familiar scientific diagrams.

Mathematician Marcus du Sautoy explores the stories behind some of the most familiar scientific diagrams.

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Episode 6: Pioneer Plaque

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