The city of Lexington, Kentucky, invites astronauts to submit space travel announcements

Then, if you – the alien – somehow understood English, you would be able to read the message at the bottom: “Visit Lexington, Kentucky.”

That's the best-case scenario the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau envisioned when it broadcast an advertisement for interstellar travel to the cosmos in late October, inviting aliens to come. Enjoy the city's bluegrass and bourbon fields.

The tourism office announced the lunar travel announcement in a press release Tuesday as part of a campaign to attract more terrestrial visitors. But extraterrestrial communication was real, and was based on research into potentially habitable planets and previous efforts to relay messages about humanity to the stars, experts told The Washington Post — leaving very little chance that an alien's first message from Earth was a A call from Earth. Bluegrass state.

“A lot of people think Kentucky is an overhead state, and it's good to give them the impression that maybe we're not,” said Robert Loder, a chemistry professor at the University of Kentucky who consulted on Lexington's Letter to the Stars. “…and that Earth is not an upper planet.”

Lexington promoters came up with an unusual idea to capitalize on interest in UFOs and space travel amid congressional hearings last year on the subject. Leslie Miller, vice president of marketing for the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the spaceflight theme still fits with the bureau's promotional goals. They needed to market Lexington as a welcoming and friendly place.

“What better way to do that than…to make your first tourism ad [for] Lexington to aliens and inviting aliens to come here?” Miller said.

Loder, a Lexington resident who was already excited about The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (a field commonly abbreviated as SETI), was tapped to assist the team. He had experience in this field as a member of the SETI League, an organization of amateur radio operators who search the skies for signals from other planets, and was only too happy to help.

“People will say, ‘Why don’t you advertise throughout the earth?’” Lauder said. “Well, you know, that makes the message longer and more difficult. So, if someone wants me to send an announcement to Lexington? Sure. I'll send that.”

Loder knew that putting together a message to send from Earth would be a greater challenge than listening to signals from home. This has been done before, most famously in 1974 when scientists broadcast a message from the Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico to Earth. A group of stars 25,000 light years from Earth. The message was a string of binary codes—denoted as ones and zeros by shifts in the transmission frequency of radio waves—that could be decoded into a grid of colored pixels arranged to represent several mathematical and scientific concepts, including the approximate outline of a human being. It was mostly cosmic bragging, scientists He told the Cornell Chronicle In 1999, to show that humanity has the ability to convey such a message.

Loder and his team chose the same structure for their message. But they had a lot to say. Loder said he consulted with experts in engineering, linguistics, philosophy and science fiction as the team decided how best to market Lexington to an extraterrestrial.

Loder said the message begins with symbols representing a series of prime numbers to show that it is from an intelligent civilization. Below, pixels appear as chemical symbols representing water, ethanol (the ingredients of bourbon), and dopamine (“Because Lexington is fun!”). Beneath the alchemical symbols are the outlines of two horses, a human, and an illustration of a rolling grassy field—”the famous bluegrass view of Lexington.” The pixel grid ends with letters written in English calling for the city.

Also encrypted in the infrared message were several grayscale images of Lexington and a short music recording by Lexington blues musician T.D. Young, according to the city's press release.

“We want to send things out to show that we're interesting… so they get an idea of ​​what life on Earth is like,” Loder said.

Miller said Lauder and the tourism office sent the message into space using a powerful laser pointed in the direction of TRAPPIST-1 during a small event at the Kentucky Horse Park on Oct. 24 after receiving approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. Now, they will wait about 40 years for the letter to reach its destination, and another 40 years for a possible response.

Does Kentucky have a chance to make first contact? Probably not, said Andrew Simeon, head of SETI research at the SETI Institute. Even assuming there are aliens near TRAPPIST-1, receiving a Lexington transmission requires a lot of timing and luck, Simeon said. An alien scanning the sky should be able to notice that the infrared laser coming from Earth is artificial, and perhaps even decode it, he said. But this would require any space instruments to be pointed at our planet at the same moment they arrive from Lexington.

“If they don't look in our direction in 40 years, at that very hour, they will miss it,” Simeon said.

But Simeon said he liked the project and how he emulated the project 1974 Arecibo message to send a viable broadcast to the universe. He also said Lexington chose a smart target: NASA Described TRAPPIST-1 is an exciting possibility for extraterrestrial life, with several rocky planets orbiting the star in its orbit. Habitable area Where conditions permit the presence of liquid water.

Simeon said he imagines any aliens in the TRAPPIST-1 system would react similarly to Earth scientists when detecting signs of life on another planet: “We would be training our telescopes on it, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all over the world.” He said.

Perhaps, if their tools were powerful enough, they might be able to locate bluegrass fields in Kentucky. If they decide to visit, how will Lexington welcome them?

“I don’t know that we’re there yet,” Miller laughed.