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Comment by dakridge | Hacker News Reader

This one is still my favorite: http://imgur.com/gallery/7ze3a

That one is a lot more interesting, though it's basically just a map, which is atypical for flags.

The OP's flag is very abstract. Presumably, any other alien race also strives for unity and lives.

It's hard to create a better flag without actually knowing aliens and having some idea of commonalities and differences with humanity. Indeed, maybe we need a flag for humanity, not planet earth?

Not so atypical for recent flags:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Cyprus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Bosnia_and_Herzegovina

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Kosovo

The programmer in me can't help but think about the maintenance map-based flags incur with border changes.

I have similar reservations about the US flag. :)

These would be the current candidates for humanity:

http://leonardodavinci.stanford.edu/submissions/clabaugh/ima...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque#/media/File:Pio...

And my personal favorite: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Voyager_...

(BTW there is a flag for earth: http://static.news18.com/pix/2015/04/UN_flag.jpg )

I wasn't aware the UN actually had a flag for Earth; BTW, it seems they don't regard Antarctica as belonging to our planet...

It's not really the flag for earth. But it gets kinda close being official flag and having 193 member states out of 194(?).

Well, the exact number of countries is a very messy issue and the definition of what is a country tends to be "whatever other countries acknowledge to be one". This can be especially awkward if some of the other countries don't want to accept its status and the rest plays along because they have no incentive to get involved.

That is functionally a horrible design. Imagine a couple hundred solar systems. It is very likely that one will have exactly 8 planets with their 3rd planet being their home planet. And even if such a system doesn't exist, this map doesn't stand out at all. At a glance it could represent any solar system: "Hey, this map has planets and a sun. Which solar system is that? I have no idea." This introduces unnecessary confusion and possible conflicts.

Symbolic representation of a solar system is the most generic thing you can choose about a solar system. A flag should be something unique that stands out from other ones.

I like this one by a Hello Internet listener:

http://i.imgur.com/WT7TUAf.png

https://www.reddit.com/r/vexillology/comments/37udsu/my_best...

Once we do colonize the solar system I'm sure invidual moons of giant planets will play a larger role than the actual planets. So I don't see this working in the future.

The only future we can truly expect, aside from total annihilation and reset of the planet, would be a total colonization of the solar system.

But, if it is to be a "flag for planet earth", it would not need encompass colonies on other worlds, and it wouldn't be the goal of such a flag to do so. If, as someone else suggested, the right idea is a flag for humanity, then your argument works.

It's still where we as mankind originated and seems somewhat appropriate. However, maybe that's short sighted and we will get a very anti-earth separatist movement from the colonies.

Why not? if Mars is colonized then there be 2 white dots on this flag (not sure why the moon is white)

It looks quite good actually

Needs to have Pluto knocked out :-)

Neil?

Seems like using a flag that gives an unknown contact your home address is a bad idea. That information might not be something we want to communicate right off the bat.

Completely agree. Reminds me of Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem novels :)

I just read that and the Dark Forrest and that (fundamental) part of the book honestly made no sense to me. His claim that you can't locate a signal's source location was in complete conflict with everything I thought I knew about astronomy and how we locate things in space.

You might want to send your concerns to SETI

One suggested solution to the Fermi paradox is that any civilization that gets noisy enough to get noticed quickly gets attacked and destroyed (or taught to hide better in the future...)

Since we are constantly broadcasting at high energy and with interesting patterns, I wouldn't worry about that. Everyone who sees this flag is either from Earth or knows its position very well.

If an alien civ discovered that flag somehow, we've probably tipped our hand.

Too late, we've already sent self-addressed envelopes out into the Cosmos.

http://www.exploringbinary.com/binary-code-on-the-pioneer-10...

That is a brilliant. IMHO a reversed out guilloche graphic like the one on the spacesuit is to hard to duplicate or draw.

Was about to hunt that one down to post. Glad to see I'm not alone.

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