“Earth is calling. Be one of the first.”
This is the invitation sent forth by the company Lone Signal on its website currently taking email addresses from those interested in joining the in first continuous, mass experiment known as METI, or Messaging for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
What this means is come June 18, anyone will be able to log on to a web portal and compose a Twitter-sized message of 144 characters, the first of which is free (any after that is like buying a song on iTunes – they run 99 cents each), and then track its progress through space.
“We’re basically asking the community to crowdfund this experiment,” The Verge reports Ernesto Qualizza, Lone Signal’s chief marketing officer, as saying. “And we hope to see it bring people from different backgrounds and countries together over a common question: how do we, as a species, want to be portrayed?”
In addition, the company plans to continuously beam the Earth’s position, outlines of the elements of the periodic table and a definition of the hydrogen atom in binary code.
The information will be transported via radio signals because, Jacob Haqq-Misra, the company’s chief science officer, told Bloomberg Businessweek, they are best formatted for exploring deep space and could even make round-trip transmissions possible within a human lifespan when it comes to relatively close star systems.
In terms of where the messages will be blasted off to, the company said they plan on picking a new star system roughly once a month deemed favorable for life.
To accomplish this, the company acquired a 30-year lease for the massive radio dish housed at the Jamesburg Earth Station in Carmel, Calif.
Built in the 1960s, the 21,000 square foot compound once used to transmit the first images from Apollo 11 was listed for $3 million as “the ultimate man-cave” by its former owner, according to The Verge.
However, the project is not without controversy.
“My basic concern, shared by many other people, is that we have no knowledge of the capabilities or intentions of an alien technological civilization,” Michael Michaud, a retired U.S. diplomat told the news source. And while he realizes the chance of actually making contact with advanced life forms is low, he worries that “we don’t know what consequences might be, and human history is not reassuring.”