Sunday, February 03, 2008

NASA sends The Beatles across the universe

Yep. 7 pm Eastern Standard Time Monday February 4 NASA will beam The Beatles song Across The Universe out in to space.

Here's what NASA writes:
The transmission over NASA's Deep Space Network will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the day The Beatles recorded the song, as well as the 50th anniversary of NASA's founding and the group's beginnings. Two other anniversaries also are being honored: The launch 50 years ago this week of Explorer 1, the first U.S. satellite, and the founding 45 years ago of the Deep Space Network, an international network of antennas that supports missions to explore the universe.

The transmission is being aimed at the North Star, Polaris, which is located 431 light years away from Earth. The song will travel across the universe at a speed of 186,000 miles per second.

Read more here.

We can't help but share the comment left by Uncle Sams nephew on the NASA site:

"Is this a serious attempt at communication or just some half-baked feelgood thing solely for a few people here to feel warm & fuzzy?

Stop wasting U.S. taxpayer money. Could've at least sent it in a format for easy decoding (like AM)... not like the transmission will orbit around Polaris while some distant civilization figures out what an MP3 digital stream is and how to decode it.The MP3 specs should be transmitted as well. And if you can only send a digital transmission, how about an uncompressed raw format for decoding.

Also hope you got the RIAA's permission for this- music sharing is a no-no.

This isn't rocket science."


In the meantime Radio Dupree has already launched the monthly update of our homepage. It happened this evening. Our Album of the Month won't need no shoes and apparently fans of sometimes-Steely Dan drummer Keith Carlock can catch him playing in Denmark this month! Read more on the Radio Dupree homepage.

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