Social network site Bebo.com is to allow its community to create a ground-breaking digital time capsule that will be beamed 120 trillion miles into space.
‘A Message From Earth’ will let young people make their mark on history with personal messages and pictures that will be broadcast to the nearest planet that could hold life.
The ad-funded commercial project, being made possible with a partnership with RDF Digital, will let the public contribute to a galactic time capsule created democratically via the internet for the very first time.
More than 12 million users of Bebo can create their own messages and vie for a spot in the final 500 that will be decided via a web vote.
Bebo claims ‘A Message From Earth’ is one of the most advanced third party applications to be integrated within a social network environment, and users are able to use the application canvas to submit images, text, or draw pictures, which are all translated into a binary format which can be broadcast into deep space via high powered radio waves.
Launching on August 1, 2008, the chosen messages will be broadcast on October 9 by the National Space Agency of Ukraine's giant RT-70 radar telescope.
The messages will travel at light speed, and will pass the moon in just 1.7 seconds and will leave Earth own solar system within seven hours, before heading on to Gliese 581C, the target planet 20.5 light years away. The message will reach its target during spring 2029.
To ensure its technical viability, the project was developed in conjunction with Dr Alexander Zaitsev, one of the world’s leading authorities on inter stellar radio messaging, based at the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics Russian Academy of Science.
Bebo VP Sales, Mark Charkin, said ‘A Message From Earth’ presented an opportunity for “the digital natives of today” to reconnect with science and the wider universe in a simple, fun and immersive way.
The project will be ad funded, and commercial partners are being sought for integration across all aspects of the project.
It is the next in a line of web media projects that Bebo has launched, following the success of ‘KateModern’, ‘Sophia's Diary’ and ‘The Gap Year’.