The Beatles 'Let It Be' classic 'Across The Universe' will be beamed 2,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles into space.
The US space agency NASA will shoot The Beatles' song to Polaris (The North Star) on February 4th. The journey is expected to take 431 years, arriving in the year 2439AD.Paul McCartney, who is listed as co-composer of the song with John Lennon (although John wrote the song) said in a statement "Amazing! Well done NASA! Send my love to the aliens. All the best, Paul".
John's wife Yoko Ono is equally excited. "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.
Martin Lewis from Springtime has organized the project and has declared February 4th Across The Universe Day.
A website for the event has been set up at www.acrosstheuniverseday.com
Here are some facts about the project.
• The song is targeted at Polaris - "The North Star" that was Man's first navigational guide. Polaris is situated 431 Light Years into space. Each "Light Year" is a distance of 5,878,625,373,183 miles
• This cosmic message-in-a-bottle from Planet Earth will travel at the Speed Of Light - 186,000 miles per second!
• The song will take 431 years to reach Polaris - arriving in the year 2,439 AD.
• The song will travel 2.5 quadrillion miles away. (A quadrillion is one thousand million million! So 2,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles away!)
• According to scientists, as the beam containing the song propagates across the universe, the signal could theoretically be picked up by anyone or anything with the right equipment. Especially if they are Beatles fans...
• If the song hits Polaris and bounces back to Earth - it would reach us in the year 2870 AD! (345 years after Zager & Evans "In The Year 2525" is reissued!)
• As the radius of our galaxy is only 50,000 light years, after hitting Polaris, the song could travel on beyond our galaxy towards the "background stars"
• Monday February 4th is the exact 40th anniversary of the first recording of that song in 1968 by The Beatles. This took place at the EMI Studios in Abbey Road, London.
• The song - officially credited to Lennon-McCartney but written primarily by John Lennon - was one of Lennon's favorite songs. The Beatles have released four separate versions of it since it was recorded. The version that is being beamed into space is the very first released version.
• The song "Across The Universe" has been performed by many artists including Bono, David Bowie, Stevie Wonder, Cyndi Lauper, Norah Jones, Brian Wilson (Beach Boys), Roger Waters (Pink Floyd), Steven Tyler (Aerosmith), Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day), Robyn Hitchcock, Rufus Wainwright, Sean Lennon, Moby, Tim McGraw, Scott Weiland, Alicia Keys, Alison Krauss, Velvet Revolver, Fiona Apple, 10cc.
• "Across The Universe" was recently utilized as the title song of a movie musical that incorporated 33 Beatles songs and featured U2 singer Bono. The film was released theatrically in September 2007 and is being released on DVD in February 2008.
• The beaming of the song into space is being masterminded at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory - the center that built and successfully launched the first US satellite "Explorer 1" exactly 50 years ago. JPL also manages the Deep Space Network. The countdown to the historic transmission will commence at JPL in Pasadena, California - which will transmit the song to NASA's Deep Space Communications Complex in Madrid, Spain that will then launch the song into space via a 70-meter diameter DSS-63 antenna. The antenna is usually used to communicate with deep space spacecraft, such as Voyager, Cassini, MER, and others.
