'One Earth Message' wants to beam your thoughts to aliens

Via utsandiego.com by Debbi Baker

Calling it the “ultimate message in a bottle,” a group of people want you to help them send a digital dispatch into deep space for extraterrestials from the inhabitants of our beautiful, blue planet Earth.

The plan is to crowdsource photos and sentiments from all over the world and beam the message to the New Horizons spacecraft currently hurtling toward Pluto where is it scheduled to make a fly-by in July en route to the outer rim of our solar system and into the galaxy, billions of miles from the sun.

The project - encouraged but not funded by NASA - is being spearheaded by space artist Jon Lomberg, who was famed astronomer Carl Sagan’s principal artistic collaborator for more than twenty years.

Lomberg was design director for Sagan's golden phonograph records project that was sent into space onboard Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in 1977 as analog time-capsules that would educate anyone who found them about life on Earth.

Both spacecraft, which also carry a stylus and directions on how to play the recordings, are now in deep space.

(No word yet on whether an extraterrestrial teenager is sitting in a bedroom wearing headphones and blasting "Johnny B. Good.")


Known as the “One Earth Message,” the new project will be a digital, integrated offering that can be updated over time and will include maps, photos and sounds that can be tagged with the location of their origin.

The images and greetings will be from all over the globe and create what its backers call the “most diverse and inclusive message” ever sent into the universe.

(And - perhaps said teenager who finds this missive can now play it on an iPhone!)

"This is really a chance to try to think about ourselves from the long perspective," Lomberg told Space.com.

Lomberg and his board, made up of 86 advisers from 26 countries, had petitioned NASA with more than 10,000 signatures from 140 nations to adopt the project. Last year, NASA signaled its support by encouraging further development.

Now the goal is to raise at least $500,000 for the technology to produce the message, one that could be decoded, and understood by beings in the future.

(No easy task considering we have no idea what form said beings will have. I mean, what if they don't have eyes or ears or opposable thumbs?)

With 52 days to go, the initial phase has reached $13,395. All funds will go to the project regardless of whether the funding goal is met.

The next step will be a worldwide call for submissions.

“We'll network the planet using advanced crowdsourcing techniques to create the most diverse and inclusive message possible. We’ll even send expeditions to remote parts of the world where indigenous peoples are a living link to the earliest human cultures,” the group wrote on its website.

Those ultimately chosen for inclusion will be decided after a consensus between advisers and the public.

Lomberg said that whether the intersteller letter is actually received by anyone or anything, its goal is to get people excited about the New Horizon mission and space exploration in general.

“Surely the act of working together to represent not only the people of the world but the other beings with which we share this planet is in itself a thing worth doing,” Lumberg said.

“Who will speak for Earth? You will!" he said. "Let’s make a message and send it to the stars.“

What do you say, people of Earth?

Post your message to the galaxy below or on our Facebook page.

All the information for the project can be found here.

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