Flying at the Speed of Light since 2009...

Eleven Light-Years... 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 in the summer of 2009. As of 7 PM California time tonight (12 PM Sydney time on Friday, August 28), the radio signal containing 25,878 goodwill text messages—including one by me—will have ventured across approximately 65 trillion miles (104 trillion kilometers) of deep space...which, as stated at the very start of this Blog entry, equals a distance of eleven light-years. 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 about 9 years to reach the Gliese 581 star system. Carry on!


"My name is Richard Par, and HELLO from planet Earth!!! I hope all is well in your civilization...and I hope you are a much more peaceful species than we are..."
Richard Par
August 17, 2009