Bebo reaches out to alien civilisations

by Stevie Smith - Aug 5 2008, 09:25

Looking to perhaps stretch its core audience appeal beyond the boundaries defined by planet Earth and humankind, popular social networking Web site Bebo has announced it is joining forces with RDF Digital to beam a ground-breaking digital time capsule deep into space.

More specifically, Bebo’s ambitious 'A Message From Earth' project launched on August 01 thanks to a partnership with British television production company RDF that will enable network users to submit personal messages and pictures for high-powered radio broadcast to the nearest planet that could sustain life.

According to Bebo, its galactic time capsule, which is set to be beamed some 120 trillion miles into space, will exist as the first ever such communication capsule to have its content formed democratically through the Internet.

The project will allow more than 12 million Bebo users to create and submit their own personal messages for inclusion, with a Web vote ultimately deciding the final 500 entrants that will be added to the digital capsule via binary translation. The online voting process will run through to September 30.

The actual broadcasting of the digital time capsule is scheduled to take place on October 09 by the National Space Agency of Ukraine’s giant RT-70 Radio Astronomical Telescope in Eupatoria.

Bebo enthuses that the digital payload will travel at light speed, shooting past the moon in a mere 1.7 seconds before completely leaving our solar system in under seven hours. The target planet is orbiting a distant star known only as Gliese 581C, and is located some 20.5 light years away, which should see the capsule reaching its final destination by 2029.

The digital time capsule project was conceived by Oli Madgett, who sees its purpose as being: “to use the angle of space to help capture young people’s imaginations and inspire them to think about our own planet Earth and humanity’s impact upon it.”

Bebo and RDF have developed 'A Message From Earth' in conjunction with Dr. Alexander Zaitsev of the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics Russian Academy of Science. Dr. Zaitsev is considered to be one of the world’s leading authorities on inter stellar radio messaging.

Click here to watch a short animation film that fully explains the concept and execution of Bebo’s 'A Message From Earth' project.

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