Saturday, February 09, 2008

Alien MP3 players


NASA has now gotten into music file sharing. I think they had permission, since the surviving Beatles and Lennon's widow expressed thanks for NASA's idea.

NASA beamed a MP3 of John Lennon's
"Across the Universe" song across the galaxy.

They did this to
...commemorate the 40th anniversary of the day The Beatles recorded the song, as well as the 50th anniversary of NASA's founding and the group's beginnings. Two other anniversaries also are being honored: The launch 50 years ago this week of Explorer 1, the first U.S. satellite, and the founding 45 years ago of the Deep Space Network, an international network of antennas that supports missions to explore the universe...
I don't know if aliens have MP3 players. We will never know with the current state of technology since the distance and time for the signals to be downloaded some 400 light years away won't happen for some 400 years.

Here's some detail on the transmission:

The song, in MP3 format, will be sent from an enormous antenna placed near Madrid on Monday at midnight. In this way they will celebrate three anniversary: the NASA’s half a century, 45 years of existence of the Deep Space Network antenna system and four decades of the song itself. If the crews of spaceships will enter the orbit of Polaris in 431 years, they will have the chance to hear the song that will be transmitted by the NASA in a few days.
some related links
NASA
Chicago Tribune

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