- Bebo
Congratulations Bebo – you’ve made the leap into a new dimension with your Message from Earth. Welcome to the universe of the eternal message. We’ve been doing it a little longer than you but we are pleased to welcome you into this new area of communications.
Although in a way, it isn’t really about communications in our case as SentForever is all about a one-way transmission – into eternity. It’s a great concept sending 501 messages from Earth to a planet orbiting a distant sun and we’d love you to get a response, and in the bigger scheme of things the 42 years it will take to get a response isn’t really that long!
If you don’t know about Bebo’s Message from Earth, here’s a bit of background. Bebo have beamed 501 messages from users into space in a digital time capsule. Using a Ukrainian radio telescope, normally used to identify and track asteroids that pose a threat to Earth, they have beamed the messages to a planet orbiting the star Gliese 581c – 21 light years from Earth – because it is believed to be capable of supporting life. The Message From Earth project invited Bebo users, celebrities and politicians to submit messages and pictures that “consider the planet from a fresh perspective” and raise awareness of environmental pressures on our planet.
Conceived by Oli Madgett of RDF Digital, a subsidiary of Wife Swap producer RDF Media, the project claims to be the first to democratically select content to be transmitted into space. Users posted entries and voted for the best ones on a dedicated Bebo page from August 4 until September 30. The digital time capsule was transmitted on 9th October 2008. RDF covered the £20,000 data cost of the four-and-a-half-hour transmission from the National Space Agency in Ukraine, sending the messages on the 120 trillion-mile journey to Gliese 581c.
21 years is a long time for a message to travel. However, if you want to send a message that will travel for the rest of eternity, then send a SentForever message.
