Outer-space ad set to be broadcast

Malaysia Sun Saturday 8th March, 2008

A plan to broadcast the first advertisement into space is underway at the University of Leicester in the UK.

A 30-second advertisement about how life on earth is perceived, will be beamed into the outermost reaches of space.

A 500 MHz ultra high frequency radar from the EISCAT Space Centre in Svalbard will telecast the winning advertisement on June 12th.

The radar lies in the Arctic Ocean midway between northern Norway and the North Pole.

The transmission will be directed at The Great Bear Constellation, just 42 light years away from Earth.

The Great Bear Constellation is believed to host a habitable zone that could potentially harbour small terrestrial planets and support life as we know it.

The advertisement will travel at the speed of light and continue for an indefinite period.

Within 1.2 seconds the transmission will pass our moon.

After 4.5 minutes it will pass Marsand will whiz past the Sun in nine minutes.

Five and a half hours later it will travel past Pluto and out of our solar system.

The effective power of the transmitted signal to the Universe will be around 2,000 million watts, ensuring the advertisement could be received and watched hundreds of light years from Earth.