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Planet Earth Reaches Out To Groovy Aliens All Across The Universe

Lexington, Virginia, 02/03/08

Don Jyovi Saraswati Di Morgese

email from buddy

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my reply...Jai Guru Dev!!! awesome cool sending shivers down my spine! am sharing it with my readers...thanx!

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Here it is

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How poignantly fitting (and invincibly delightful) that NASA has chosen a Beatles song that honors Guru Dev to beam into the universe. This is the first time NASA is doing anything like this.

Many of us will remember the song: "Across the Universe." Guru Dev’s name is repeated throughout (see lyrics below the news release).

Press Release

WASHINGTON, Jan 31, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- For the first time ever, NASA will beam a song -- The Beatles' "Across the Universe" -- directly into deep space at 7 p.m. EST on Feb. 4.

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. Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney expressed excitement that the tune, which was principally written by fellow Beatle John Lennon, was being beamed into the cosmos.

"Amazing! Well done, NASA!" McCartney said in a message to the space agency. "Send my love to the aliens. All the best, Paul."

Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, characterized the song's transmission as a significant event.

"I see that this is the beginning of the new age in which we will communicate with billions of planets across the universe," she said.

It is not the first time Beatles music has been used by NASA; in November 2005,

McCartney performed the song "Good Day Sunshine" during a concert that was transmitted to the International Space Station. "Here Comes the Sun," "Ticket to Ride" and "A Hard Day's Night" are among other Beatles' songs that have been played to wake astronaut crews in orbit.

Feb. 4 has been declared "Across The Universe Day" by Beatles fans to commemorate the anniversaries. As part of the celebration, the public around the world has been invited to participate in the event by simultaneously playing the song at the same time it is transmitted by NASA. Many of the senior NASA scientists and engineers involved in the effort are among the group's biggest fans.

"I've been a Beatles fan for 45 years -- as long as the Deep Space Network has been around," said Dr. Barry Geldzahler, the network's program executive at NASA Headquarters, Washington. "What a joy, especially considering that 'Across the Universe' is my personal favorite Beatles song."

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., operates the Deep Space Network For information about the Deep Space Network, go to:

http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/index.html

SOURCE NASA

http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/

Copyright © 2008 PR Newswire. All rights reserved

Here are the lyrics:

Across The Universe

February 1, 2008, 4:47 pm

By Patrick J. Lyons

If you’re out there in deep space, you’ll want to be tuning in at 7 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, Feb. 4 (plus however long it takes electromagnetic radiation to reach you from Earth doing the 186,000-miles-a-second speed limit).

That’s when NASA will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of its first space mission — the launch of the Explorer 1 satellite — by using the system of huge antennas that usually listen for inbound signals from space to send one outbound instead: the Beatles’ song "Across the Universe," which as it happens was mostly recorded exactly 40 years earlier, on Feb. 4, 1968.

Reception will be best in the general direction of

, 431 lightyears away, which is where NASA is aiming the signal. (That would be the North Star to us laymen.) But it ought to be audible in plenty of places on Earth as well, at least by imitation: NASA is encouraging space fans and Beatle fans alike to play the song themselves at the same time.

NASA’s press release includes some perfectly in-character comments from Sir Paul McCartney ("Amazing! Well done, NASA! Send my love to the aliens All the best, Paul.") and from Yoko Ono, widow of John Lennon, the song’s main author ("I see that this is the beginning of the new age in which we will communicate with billions of planets across the universe."). Presumably, Julie Taymor will be pleased as well; her film "Across the Universe," built around a soundtrack of Beatle songs, is still in theaters and contending for an Oscar; it is due for release on DVD on Tuesday.

The event also commemorates the 45th anniversary of the creation of the antenna system, the Deep Space Network, which NASA uses to explore space at one remove by listening to the electromagnetic radiation coming our way from Out There; the system also comes in handy for picking up data sent by space probes we have dispatched to the planets and beyond over the years.

NASA doesn’t often send outgoing mail this way; the last high-profile American broadcast meant specifically for extraterrestrial ears was also

, dispatched by Professor Frank Drake of Cornell University in 1974 during the dedication of the upgraded Arecibo radiotelescope in Puerto Rico. (No reply, at least so far.) But Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute, which has been looking for signs of life beyond earth since 1984, noted in an e-mail message to our colleague Dennis Overbye today that other groups in Ukraine and Canada have been sending signals in recent years.

Of course, vast amounts of electromagnetic signals flood out from the Earth every day as a side effect of ordinary human-to-human activity, from TV and radio broadcasts, radar stations, satellite uplinks and other sources, and the leading wave of that stuff has an eight-decade head start.

"Proof of our existence is already out there," Dr. Shostak noted, "that’s simply a fact."

An array of antennas that could pick up terrestrial TV signals in a distant solar system wouldn’t be hard to build, he observed. But there’s still plenty of time for any potential alien listener to tie-die some T-shirts and stock the fridge before settling in to enjoy the song. Though scientists have found evidence of some 270 planets of other stars, most are extremely unlikely to support life, and all but a handful are far enough away that no readily detected, human-generated signal could yet have reached them.

"It’s safe to say that nobody knows of the existence of Homo sapiens (beyond this planet, of course)," Dr. Shostak observed.

A pity. The Lede was hoping for a little intergalactic help grokking that bit of Sanskrit in the chorus, "Jai guru deva om."

q February 1st, 2008 6:15 pm