Send an echo of yourself across the galaxy
Published on: Sunday, 09 January 2011
At this year’s BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition you might just get the chance to do so. Students, their teachers and members of the general public will have the opportunity to send a message and a picture of themselves to a planet outside our solar system, using a live linkup to a radio telescope operated by Cork Institute of Technology at its science centre in Blackrock Castle Observatory, Cork.
Fancy sending a message to Space?
Everyone who sends a message can keep track of its general progress by logging onto a dedicated website www.bco.ie/message-to-space
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CIT Blackrock Castle Observatory invites exhibition visitors to stand 42 to send a 75 character bit map encoded message to a distant world via the radio telescope at the Cork science centre. The message will travel at the speed of light (300,000 kilometers per second), to the chosen destination from a library of exoplanets. Over 440 exoplanets or planets outside our solar system have been discovered since 1995 when the first main sequence exoplanet was charted by researchers at Observatoire de Haute-Provence.
Institutes of Technology Ireland IOTI is once again proud to sponsor the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition which runs in the RDS Ballsbridge from Wednesday 12th to Saturday 15th January inclusive. IOTI will have a stand in the World of Science and Technology showcasing the work from five Institutes of Technology. (Number 42 is coincidentally according to Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy the Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything).
What message would YOU send to a distant civilization?
