ONE LIGHT-YEAR! That’s how far the Hello From Earth message has traveled since being transmitted from a giant NASA antenna in Australia to the exoplanet Gliese 581d exactly one year ago today. As of 7 PM California time tonight (12 PM Sydney time on Saturday, August 28), the radio signal containing 25,878 goodwill text messages—including one by me—will have ventured across 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers) of deep space...which, as stated at the very start of this Blog entry, equals a distance of one light-year. The signal, despite traveling 186,000 miles per second (or 671 million miles per hour, or um, 1 billion kilometers per hour), will still take 19 years to reach the Gliese 581 star system. By the way, have you guys seen the trailer for the upcoming sci-fi film Skyline (which comes out in theaters this November)? The Hello From Earth signal is mentioned at the very start of this trailer. Nice...
On another note, the Sent Forever signal that was transmitted from the United Kingdom at 8:07 PM (California time) on October 5 of last year is now 5.2 trillion miles (8.4 trillion kilometers) from Earth as of this typing. It's 700 billion miles (1.1 trillion kilometers) from reaching one light-year as well... I stated in past entries that I was gonna submit another message through Sent Forever, but unfortunately, looks like this won’t happen. At least temporarily, that is. The Sent Forever folks stated on their website a few months ago that they were unable to renew their transmission license... I shouldn't have procrastinated. Here’s hoping their inability to renew their license is due to financial reasons and not the service being a scam this whole time. That is all.
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