So we’ve all sent drunken text messages, be it begging for them to come back, telling your friends exactly how much you love them no really truly love them, or informing work you won’t be in tomorrow because you have leprosy. Its getting a little cliched nowadays.
So next time you’re in town, a little worse for wear, text Gliese 581d, a planet about 20 light years from us, hanging round the constellation Libra (woo- my star sign. I knew I was special). This planet is apparently a high contender to actually support intelligent life, according to the scientists that discovered it. And HelloFromEarth.net are going to text it.
Yup. Australian magazine Cosmos, to celebrate Science Week in Australia, are hoping to contact aliens. They don’t know if there’s anyone up there, but they’re hopeful. And they’re collecting messages from all around the world. They’ll be transmitted on Monday 24th August at 7am our time, and won’t reach Gliese 581d until 2029, at which point we can then sit back and wait for the answer.
Judging by some of the submissions to the site it might be ‘OMG stp txtin us u freaks. WTF wud we wnt 2 tlk 2 u 4?’ but it’s an interesting experiment none the less. Sending random pulses into space hasn’t tracked anything down- that we know of- but that might just be because aliens didn’t develop Morse code…
Here are some of my favourite submissions so far-