by Chris Thomason

Some great news in that Virgin Mobile have partnered with SentForever to allow all mobile users to send a text into space simply by sending a message to 80995 (in the UK). Here’s the press release:

Virgin Mobile today announce the launch of ‘Texts into Space’, a service which allows people to send their text declarations of love and affection into the uncharted territories of space where they will travel through the cosmos for all eternity.

Ever said ‘I’ll love you forever’? Well now you can prove it!

Launching just in time for Christmas this is a unique gift idea for any loved one. The texts are transmitted via a satellite Earth Station in Cornwall by SentForever.com. Once sent you can ensure your message will live on eternally, a concept that will surely touch the recipients heart.

The ‘text into space’ costs the price of a normal text and can be sent from any mobile phone by texting the desired message to the Virgin Mobile short code 80995. Then, for just £9.95, the message recipient will receive a formal ‘Certificate of Transmission’ from SentForever.com confirming the launch of the eternal message and details of how to track the message on the SentForever.com website as it continues to travel through time and space. Email updates are also available to alert the recipient as to when their message has passed key milestones.

Tim Dowling from Virgin Mobile said “We are quite literally over the moon at the thought of millions of wishes and messages of love being texted into space”.

Stephanie Baillache, Managing Director of SentForever.com, said, “We are delighted to be working with a leading telecoms organisation such as Virgin Mobile. The collaboration of these two innovative brands will ensure our exciting service reaches a much wider audience and thankfully there are no roaming charges in space!”

Our home - Earth

By Chris 

Did you know that October 4^th to 10^th is World Space Week? I didn’t. Apparently the United Nations General Assembly in 1999 declared October 4-10 annually as World Space Week. Today, the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs in Vienna provides the overall global coordination of World Space Week, under the guidance of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, and with the support of World Space Week Association, a non-government organization. 

I’m impressed that so many bodies are actively promoting the education and awareness of space across the globe. Mind you, we do often take our position here on Earth for granted. In a previous posting I spoke about the Pale Blue Dot. That view of Earth taken by a Voyager probe that shows our planet as a pale blue dot against the un-inhabitable vastness of outer space. Solitude. Precarious positioning. A living planet so remote from any other living body in space. 

I am particularly interested in the pale blue dot as I once worked for a mining company and have spent more time underground than the vast majority of people on this planet. And I mean deep underground – about a mile or more. So deep that the rock temperature is over 40 degrees Celsius and rock starts to flow over short periods of time due to the intense pressure. 

We regard Earth as our home, but in fact we can only live on the very surface of it. Some creatures do live in the ocean depths – but not humans. We are effectively trapped on the surface of a small round piece of rock, surrounded by a tenuous atmosphere floating in a loosely defined orbit in the vastness of space. Whew! 

But I’m glad – of course. As so many wondrous things happen and exist on our planet, and of course among the human race. I don’t believe for one moment that we are alone; there are other life forms out there, somewhere. Hopefully, at some time in the future, mankind may establish contact with them. It’s a long shot but I hope so.      

But by celebrating space week we are actually celebrating our potential neighbours, and hopefully educating people and broadening their awareness of what is all around us. And who knows who may be receiving the SentForever messages that are transmitted? Have a happy World Space Week.

New dwarf planet

Posted by Chris 

Two new planets were discovered this week – which I find really interesting. The first is actually only a dwarf planet about one-third the size of Pluto. It orbits about 50 times further away from the sun as our Earth. It’s egg shaped with two smaller bits orbiting it due to a collision at some time in its past, and has been named Haumea after the Hawaiian mythology goddess of childbirth and fertility. 

The second is a really big planet; about eight times the size of Jupiter and it orbits a distant star about 500 light years from Earth. It was discovered by three scientists from the University of Toronto. This planet is the first one that has ever actually been seen orbiting a star other than our own sun. Previously observed planets were either free-floating in space or were inferred from collected data. 

What I find especially interesting is the difference in distance from Earth. SentForever’s eternal messages are transmitted through space at the speed of light, which means that a message sent to the dwarf planet would reach it in just under seven hours while a message to the big planet would take 500 years to reach there. Quite a difference!   

But another interesting angle is that we are excited because we have just discovered them – even though they have quietly been “doing their thing” for several billion years. It’s a bit like meeting your life-partner or soul-mate. When you actually meet them you will realize they have been on Earth for many years going about their daily lives – it’s just that you only recently discovered them. If you were a planet or a person how do you actually “announce your existence?”   

What if you were to live your life and die – and nobody knew, or nobody remembered you? Maybe that means that you never really existed! I seem to be getting a bit philosophical but I’m thinking about making sure that you are remembered. I’m thinking about immortality – ensuring that you are recognized and remembered for the rest of time.

The messages that SentForever transmit continue to travel across the Universe for the rest of eternity – so isn’t this making you immortal? I’m thinking interesting thoughts here. I’ll come back to this in a blog post the very near future.

Our messages into eternity may have no final destination as they travel forever, but they do have an interesting starting point – the BT Goonhilly earth station in Cornwall, UK.

Goonhilly was once the largest earth satellite station in the world, with more than 25 dishes in use and over 60 in total. Its first dish, called Arthur, was built in 1962 to link with Telstar, the world’s first active satellite. Arthur received the first ever live transatlantic television broadcasts from the United States via the Telstar satellite on July 11, 1962.

Ofcom has licensed SentForever to transmit our messages into deep space and our messages are transmitted in the Ku band in the 12 to 18 GHz wave band. At Goonhilly there is a visitor centre that explains all the activities that occur at the site. See http://www.goonhilly.bt.com for more information.

Our dish points roughly south east, and as we transmit our messages they pass 600 miles over the French Mediterranean in the blink of an eye. Within five hours the messages leave our solar system and travel at the speed of light for the rest of eternity.

All our messages are transmitted from the Goonhilly earth station, so whether you are sending a message for a newly born baby, proposing marriage in the most romantic way possible, sending a message of remembrance to honour someone’s memory, or simply expressing how much you love someone, your eternal message will commence its journey from Goonhilly.

Why would someone want to send a message into eternity? Well, here are my top three reasons for sending an eternal message:

1. Remembrance – when you feel the need to talk to someone dear to you who has passed on. When you have to write something down, it helps to clarify your thoughts. Some people talk to their dear ones through prayer, which generally isn’t just a rambling monologue but a structured and purposeful way of communicating. If you are a more spiritual person and want to send something special that will travel through the heavens for the rest of eternity and that you feel will be close to your lost one, that’s a wonderful reason.

2. Birth – when a child is born, our natural association may be that it is a new child for its parents. However, if you think about it differently, a child being born is actually a much bigger miracle, as it is the moment when a new soul (or spirit) enters the Universe. Maybe this new child will do something really amazing in its lifetime that will benefit the whole of mankind. Who knows? But a SentForever birth message welcoming this new baby into our Earth, into our lives, and into the Universe as a whole is a very special way to celebrate this occasion.

3. Marriage – as our vows often refer to the relationship lasting forever. Why not transmit your wedding vows into eternity to celebrate this special day? It’s a fact that a large percentage of marriages do fail. But by thinking back to the magic and special feelings that existed on the wedding day, and also to the fact that those wedding vows that were said are travelling through the Universe for all eternity (and that they can never be recalled), would this help the couple to remember the feelings when they got married in the first place?

What are your top reasons for sending a message? Let me know and we may be able to make it happen for you.

I’m sure you have heard the saying “Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life.” It’s true of course, but for most of us tomorrow tends to be pretty much like today which seems pretty much like yesterday which seems remarkably similar to the day before…. You get the pattern here?

However, if something changes quite significantly for you, then that can actually change tomorrow and also have a permanent effect on the rest of your life too. Graduating is one such event.

For many of us, graduating signaled the end of formal education and the start of a new life in paid employment. It’s curious that this stage of our lives seems to go on interminably and yet it only lasts some 40-odd years. But in those 40-odd years a lot happens.

Love, marriage, children, families and homes will all be formed. An individual may well make some significant achievement in their work that benefits mankind in some way. So upon graduation, who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Maybe that’s the time to wish somebody well for the future – that graduation marks an important transition point in life. To show how important that point is with SentForever, you can send a message of congratulations and celebration on the success of graduation, but also to send an eternal message to express all the hopes for success in every way in the future.

Because just as one day leads into the next, one person’s successes can be the starting point for another person to build on. What you do today can enable somebody else to do something better and different tomorrow – which then allows somebody else to do the same the next day. And so on into infinity. Just like a SentForever message.

Send somebody who is graduating a special SentForever eternal message, because what they are about to start doing from graduation day plus one will in some small way influence the future of mankind.