And if you, the alien, somehow understands English, you’ll be able to read the message underneath that says, “Visit Lexington, Kentucky.”
That’s the best-case scenario the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau envisioned when it sent out a space travel ad inviting aliens in late October. Enjoy the city’s bluegrass fields and bourbon.
The tourism board announced the Moonshot travel ad in a news release Tuesday as part of a campaign to attract more visitors from around the globe. But extraterrestrial activity is real, based on studies of potentially habitable planets and previous efforts to send messages about humanity to the stars, experts say in Washington. he told the Post. It is extremely unlikely that the first message sent by aliens from Earth is an invitation from Earth. Bluegrass State.
“A lot of people think of Kentucky as a viaduct state, but maybe it’s good to give the impression that we’re not,” said University of Kentucky Chemistry, who consulted on Lexington’s message to the Star. Professor Robert Rodder said. “…and that Earth is not an elevated planet.”
Lexington organizers came up with the unusual idea of capitalizing on interest in UFOs and space travel during last year’s Congressional hearings on UFOs and space travel. Leslie Miller, vice president of marketing for the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the space travel theme remains consistent with the agency’s promotional goals. They needed to market Lexington as a welcoming and friendly place.
“What better way to do that than by introducing the first tourism advertisement?” [for] Are we going to make Lexington an extraterrestrial and invite aliens here? ” Miller said.
Rodder, a Lexington resident, already had a passion for this. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (a field commonly abbreviated as SETI) was hired to assist the team. He has experience in the field as a member of his SETI League, an organization of amateur radio operators who search the skies for signals from other planets, and was happy to help.
“People will say, ‘Why don’t we advertise for the whole planet?'” Rodder said. “Well, that would make the message longer and harder. So what if someone wants to send me an ad for Lexington? Of course. I’ll send it.”
Rodder knew that putting together messages to send from Earth would be more difficult than listening to signals from home. This has been done before, most famously in his 1974 when scientists broadcast a message from the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico. star cluster 25,000 light years from Earth. This message is a string of binary codes with 1’s and 0’s represented by varying frequencies of radio transmissions, which can be decoded into colored pixels arranged to represent some mathematical and scientific concepts. can be decoded into a grid of human.It was almost the pride of the universe, scientists. told the Cornell Chronicle in 1999 to show that humanity has the ability to convey such a message.
Rodder and his team chose the same structure for their message. But they had much more to say. Loder said the team consulted with experts in engineering, linguistics, philosophy and science fiction when deciding how best to market Lexington to extraterrestrials.
Loder said the message began with a symbol representing a series of prime numbers, indicating it came from an intelligent civilization. Further down, pixels show the shapes of chemical symbols representing water, ethanol (an ingredient in bourbon), and dopamine (“Lexington is fun!”). Beneath the chemical symbol are outlines of two horses and his lone human, and an illustration of a rolling prairie, Lexington’s “iconic bluegrass landscape.” The pixel grid ends with letters that spell out invitation to the city in English.
The infrared message also encodes several grayscale photos of Lexington and a short musical recording of Lexington blues musician T.D. Young, according to a city news release.
“We want to send something to show that we’re interesting,” Rodder said. “…That way they can get some idea of what life on Earth is like.”
Miller said Lodder and the tourism board, after receiving approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, launched a strong move in the direction of TRAPPIST-1 during a small event at the Kentucky Horse Park on Oct. 24. It is said to have used lasers to send messages into space. Currently, we wait approximately 40 years for a message to reach its destination, and another 40 years for a reply.
Does Kentucky have a chance to make first contact? Probably not, says Andrew Siemion, SETI research director at the SETI Institute. Even assuming there are aliens in the vicinity of TRAPPIST-1, Siemion said it will take a lot of timing and luck to receive Lexington’s transmissions. Aliens scanning the sky would notice that infrared lasers emitted by Earth are man-made, and perhaps even be able to decipher them, he said. But for this to happen, the alien instruments must be pointed in the direction of our planet at the very moment of their arrival from Lexington.
“If they weren’t looking in our direction at that particular time 40 years later, they would have missed it,” Siemion said.
But Siemion said he was impressed by the project and how it was being imitated. Arecibo message in 1974 to send viable communications into space.He also said Lexington chose a wise target: NASA was popular TRAPPIST-1 is a fascinating look into extraterrestrial life with several rocky planets orbiting its star. habitable zone If conditions are such that liquid water can exist.
Siemion said he imagined any TRAPPIST-1 aliens would react similarly to scientists on Earth when they discover signs of life on another planet. “We will be training our telescope on that planet 24 hours a day, seven days a week.” He said.
Maybe if their instruments were powerful enough, they could pinpoint the location of Kentucky’s bluegrass fields. If they decide to visit, how will Lexington welcome them?
“I don’t know if we’re there yet,” Miller laughed.