Scientists in Lexington, Fayette County, Kentucky, United States have sent an encoded infrared message to TRAPPIST-1. With at least seven exoplanets, the cool red dwarf star lies in the constellation Aquarius about 40.66 light-years away from Earth.
The star has a surface temperature of about 2,566 kelvins. It is estimated to be 7.6 billion years old and believed to be a potentially hospitable environment for life.
After receiving approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, Lexington’s tourism department Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau, also known as VisitLex, beamed an interstellar travel advertisement into the cosmos. The message is inviting aliens to visit the city and enjoy its bluegrass fields and bourbon.
Encoded in the infrared message are several gray-scale photos of Lexington and a short music recording from Tee Dee Young, the city’s very own blues musician. During a small event at Kentucky Horse Park on October 24, 2023, Visit Lex beamed the message into space using a laser aimed in the direction of TRAPPIST-1.
To show that the message is from an intelligent civilization, it opens with symbols representing a sequence of prime numbers. Under those symbols are pixels showing the shape of chemical symbols representing dopamine and bourbon components, which are water and ethanol.
The outlines of a human between two horses and an illustration of a rolling grass field is underneath the chemical symbols. The pixel grid ends with the words, “VISIT LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY”.
CONAN Daily 