Hello from SentForever to Hello from Earth. It’s great to see another opportunity for people to send mesages into space with the Hello from Earth site sending their message on 24th August 2009. 

They are transmitting a message towards a planet that orbits around the star Gliese 581 which will arrive there around December 2029. Even though deep space messages travel at the speed of light, their radio signal will need to cross 20.3 light-years (or 192 trillion kms) of interstellar space before reaching the planet.

It sounds like a long way, but Gliese is one of the 100 closest stars to Earth, making it a top target for sending and hopefully receiving a message within our lifetimes. Any response will need to travel the same way back, so unless Gliesans have improved communication technologies, the soonest we could hope to receive an answer would be in 42 years around 2051.

The message was created by Cosmos magazine to celebrate National Science Week in Australia which is an annual event now in its 12th year. It’s also supported by the Australian Government’s Department of Innovation. Industry, Science and Research. Good to see a government being on board with a project like this.

You may remember that in April 2009 SentForever transmitted a message from the people of Belgium called Hartelijke Groeten aan Iedereen (Warm Greetings to Everyone) which was the message created by a Belgian television show. We’ve sent a Hello from Earth message naturallyand we certainly wish them well with their transmission!

We are often asked if aliens will ever receive the messages that we transmit. The answer is that we don’t actually know. As our messages travel forever there’s obviously a chance that someday someone somewhere may actually receive it. But until that happens….

Quite a few of the messages that we send are from people who feel that we aren’t alone on this planet and that out there somewhere in the Universe are other beings. Whether these other beings are an alien race or even God or some other supreme being they probably couldn’t say. But it’s just that belief that we aren’t alone in this Universe.

It’s always an interesting question to ask whether we are alone, but the answer that Jodie Foster gave to this question in the film Contact was that “If we are all alone, then it seems an awful waste of space”.

Many of the people who send messages are asking for guidance or inspiration, but especially they’d like some kind of sign or acknowledgement that we aren’t alone. 

How people receive that acknowledgement is probably entirely unique to each person. However, at SentForever we are great believers in synchronicity and we feel that we sometimes receive inspiration and guidance in the form of unusual coincidences. But more about synchronicity another time…

Did you see the movie Contact starring Jodie Foster – made back in 1997? It’s based on Carl Sagan’s novel and it’s one of our favourite movies here at SentForever.

It’s based around the story of an astronomer who is searching for radio transmissions from other civilizations in deep space. Despite deep scepticism from people involved in the more traditional fields of science and astronomy, she perseveres and eventually finds one of these transmissions. The rest of the film follows the decoding of the transmission and how they go about following its instructions.

I was interviewed on BBC radio recently and was asked if anybody will ever receive the SentForever messages that are transmitted. It was a good question which I had to answer in two parts.

First of all – I don’t know if it will ever be received. Our transmissions go out in a narrow beam into one particular part of space ay any one time so on one hand the chances are slim. However, the transmission will last forever even though it gets weaker and weaker over time. So, on the other hand that boosts the chance of a message being received.

The other important element is that SentForever’s messages aren’t intended to be received. They are intended as eternal commitments and messages that people just want to send – and then to tell someone about what they have said. It’s called Unrequited Love.

So, if you’ve sent a SentForever message of unrequited love to someone here on Earth, then I hope they enjoyed receiving it. As to whether someone else out in the Universe will receive it – well, my answer comes in two parts….

If you sent a SentForever message, do you think it will be received? Let us know.