I think we shoud have a poll on this but I couldn't figure out how to set one up. Any takers? I'd love to know what everybody (including Carolyn Porco) thinks. Is this a worthy use for the DSN?

Dr Porco's taste for music: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolyn_Porco
Well, we had a discussion in another topic how far our TV & Radio signals really travel in space and concluded that only very strong radar signals get far out in space...

Well I understand (from today's Guardian article) that using the Madrid antenna the song will reach Polaris in 2439.

Oh man, so many questions unanswered in the NASA release. Anyone know what bitrate and encoding they will use (e.g. CD quality 1.2 Mbps or MP3 128 Kbps)? S-band or X-band? 100 kW? Will it be sent in real-time or over a longer period with error correction padding? And the most important question: will the song be DRM-free?

Right or wrong, the inhabitants of any planets or starships orbiting Polaris are going to get a heck of a download bill for that song when it reaches them...

Hopefully Lennon and McCartney's soft-focus mysticism will arrive in time to turn them all into pacifists and prevent that takeover of Earth they were about to launch. On the other hand it might just infuriate them.

Why not - if it gets people looking at the DSN's website, gets people talking about Cassini - it's a nice gimmick.

DOug

While songs can (hopefully) be distinguished from the random noise, they would be useless without context. If any civilization receives the song, they would send back an equivalent to "what do you mean?", and then the earthlings (if they manage to survive and happen to receive the transmission) will send more information about the human (or will it be robotic by then?) civilization of the planet Earth.

It would be much much more useful to send data about our civilization right now. And by the way, Polaris seems to be a poor choice to look for an ET for several reasons. It's a giant, and it's a variable star.

^
I think Polaris's being a poor candidate for any putative civilization is fully intended, lest NASA be accused of potentially bringing our doom by telling some bloodthirsty race around a sunlike star that we're here. I think that's unlikely in the extreme, but a lot of other people think it's a threat worth taking seriously. Same deal with the much-touted Messier 13 signal.

In short, Polaris got short-listed because it's safe, and because it's a star whose fame is disproportionate to any other named star.

You know, we can take this "space stuff" far too seriously sometimes. Nothing wrong with doing something sometimes just because it's a fun or cool thing to do. I don't think it matters that Polaris is, scientifically, a poor candidate for the receipt of such a signal, etc etc. That's missing the point. How many people have heard of Vega, or Deneb, compared to Polaris?

Being purely selfish for a moment, this will be a godsend for me as someone who does Outreach: I know that in the star parties and sky watches I hold here in Kendal throughout this year there'll be people who've heard about this, and want to know more, it will be a great conversation opener and ice breaker. Even if no-one there has heard about the story, they'll have heard of "The Pole Star" and The Beatles... add the two and voila, instant "Ahhh!" interest moment!

And being more practical, this bit of fluff and fun has got great publicity for the DSN across the world, at a time when it is - as we all know - under strain, and it has also got people who wouldn't normally talk about space talking about it, so yaaaaay NASA I say.

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Bingo, Doug & Stu. Buzz is everything in these days of mass communication. (US election years make this lesson painfully clear, believe me). Mathematically, in fact, buzz=bucks=Buck Rogers. There's no way to escape it.

Moreover, could think of many worse songs to intentionally broadcast to the Universe at large...well, not that anybody on the other end would ever understand it without coming by & getting to know us a bit better. I might've chosen Johnny Rotten et. al. for sheer amplitude & true soul, but hey, that's just me bein' an unreconstructed fogey (turned 45 today, y'all)...

For the record I agree with the other views expressed here. There is a nice paradox in playing to the home audience by broadcasting to Polaris. It's fun, it will get noticed (on Earth) and it gives a human face to a large cash-hungry public body. If there were any question of a deleterious effect on spacecraft operations they wouldn't be doing it. The Beatles' music is not bad.

I've obviously failed to stir up any controversy at all. Shucks!

Happy birthday nprev.

The Beatles are OK, but I think that Lewis Thomas had the right idea:



The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974)

TTT

RIAA is going to have a major hissy fit.

FYI - Transmission from DSS63 - 18 kW, X-Band, 128 kB

Yeah, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds could lead to alien confusion big time!

...well, if we really want to mess them up, there's always I Am the Walrus or Number Nine...if they have grad schools, there's material for about a thousand years of theses right there!

On a kinder note, the second-to-last last song on side 2 of Abbey Road would make a terrific first impression, if not a very long transmission. It even features a bit of mathematical rigor.

Good idea.