A tourism campaign from VisitLEX, the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau, hopes to attract visitors from beyond the Milky Way.
The bureau worked with a team of local scholars and scientists to beam an infrared laser message to potential alien life forms on TRAPPIST-1, a red dwarf star 40 light years away. That includes experts in engineering, linguistics, philosophy, science fiction, digital media and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
“There's so much innovation and great work that's happening in Lexington, and so it gave us an opportunity to highlight that,” VisitLEX Vice President of Marketing Leslie Miller said. “But the group that we worked with really helped kind of assemble, based on existing research, what types of messages have been sent to space already? What, exploring from a linguistic standpoint, or philosophy standpoint, would even make sense to send?”
The coded bitmap image displays the chemical symbols of water and ethanol – the ingredients for bourbon – alongside pictures of Lexington’s landscape and horses.
Miller says the campaign was designed to capitalize on a growing public interest in extraterrestrials.
“There's this kind of cultural zeitgeist that's happening around space travel right now,” Miller said. “So this campaign really allowed us to insert Lexington into that conversation.”
A countdown on the campaign’s webpage says it would take a little less than 39 years for the message to reach its destination.
Artifacts from the activation, including the telescope and engraving laser that were used, can be seen at the Lexington Visitors’ Center. A postcard station where visitors can leave other messages to any potential out-of-this-world lifeforms is also set up.
