Across the Universe to be broadcasted to the North Star

[Crawn2003]

NASA on Monday will broadcast the Beatles' song "Across the Universe" across the galaxy to Polaris, the North Star.

This first-ever beaming of a radio song by the space agency directly into deep space is nostalgia-driven. It celebrates the 40th anniversary of the song, the 45th anniversary of NASA's Deep Space Network, which communicates with its distant probes, and the 50th anniversary of NASA.

"Send my love to the aliens," Paul McCartney told NASA through a Beatles historian. "All the best, Paul."

Link to Article on CNN.com

 

[yg17]

And since Polaris is so far away, the aliens won't be hearing it until the 471st anniversary of the song

 

[astrostu]

What a waste of the deep space network. How about funding some research instead of doing this, NASA?

 

[Counterfit]

They should broadcast Rust in Peace... Polaris by Megadeth sometime.

 

[Abstract]

Or just send them Tom Cruise's big psycho rant on Scientology. The aliens would be very interested in how he's doing since the probing.

 

[Counterfit]

I dunno, we certainly wouldn't want them sending any more space ships that look like Boeing 707s here and then blowing up their passengers in a volcano with H-bombs.

 

[mcarnes]

Nothing would say "hello" better then Whiplash by Metallica.

 

[yg17]

Nothing would say "hello" better then Whiplash by Metallica.

Do you really want to piss of some potentially hostile aliens by sending that crap out there?

 

[clayj]

862 years from now, the response from the alien listening post at Polaris: "Can you send us the Fiona Apple version of the song? We have an iTunes code for it."

 

[mcarnes]

Do you really want to piss of some potentially hostile aliens by sending that crap out there?

Crap? Oh someone clearly needs to read this book. It's a collection of essays by 20 different philosophy professors. I approve!

 

[blairwillis]

Why are they sending an MP3 file? Bandwidth too expensive? Really, wouldn't it make sense to send the least complex file possible so the aliens could easily intercept and decode it?

Meanwhile, on Polaris, some alien is kicking back watching DirecTV when a bunch of garbled video junk interrupts the latest episode of Grey's Anatomy. "F-in DirecTV crappy signal," he says, totally missing NASA's attempt to reach out to our interstellar brethren.

 

[blairwillis]

mcarnes, I just saw your avatar and it made me think:

"Hey NASA, you're fired!"