Depicted on the flag is the ‘Pulsar Map’, a design which was included on plaques attached to the two Voyager scientific space probes, launched in 1977. The map shows the location of our sun relative to known pulsars, the rapidly spinning remains of dying stars, and is intended as a return address to possible extra-terrestrial intelligences who may discover them. The Voyager probes have now left the Solar System and are traveling in interstellar space, but since their launches, billions more pulsars have been discovered in the Milky Way alone, rendering the maps they carry obsolete.
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Kallat’s flag commission echoes many of the key themes of Whorled; distance and measurement, time and place, and the fundamental incertitude of our location within the cosmos.
