the arecibo message, transmitted in 1974, was a 1679 pixel image with 73 rows and 23 columns. it shows the numbers one through ten, the atomic numbers of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus, the formulas for the sugars and bases in the nucleotides of dna, the number of nucleotides in dna, the double helix structure of dna, a figure of a human being and its height, the population of earth, a diagram of our solar system, and an image of the arecibo telescope with its diameter.