Messages From Earth
In October 2008, members of the networking website Bebo beamed A Message From Earth, a high-power transmission at Gliese 581, using the RT-70 radio telescope belonging to the National Space Agency of Ukraine. This transmission is due to arrive in the Gliese 581 system's vicinity by the year 2029; the earliest possible arrival for a response, should there be one, would be in 2049.
As part of the 2009 National Science Week celebrations in Australia, Cosmos Magazine launched a website called Hello From Earth to collect messages for transmission to Gliese 581d. The maximum length of the messages was 160 characters, and they were restricted to the English language. In total, 25,880 messages were collected from 195 countries around the world. The messages were transmitted from the DSS-43 70 m radio telescope at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex at Tidbinbilla, Australia on the 28th of August, 2009.
Read more about this topic: Gliese 581 D
Famous quotes containing the words messages and/or earth:
“All the old supports going, gone, this man reaches out a hand to steady himself on a ledge of rough brick that is warm in the sun: his hand feeds him messages of solidity, but his mind messages of destruction, for this breathing substance, made of earth, will be a dance of atoms, he knows it, his intelligence tells him so: there will soon be war, he is in the middle of war, where he stands will be a waste, mounds of rubble, and this solid earthy substance will be a film of dust on ruins.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“The last sound on the worthless earth will be two human beings trying to launch a homemade spaceship and already quarreling about where they are going next.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)