Pretty cool story, it seems the boys will indeed outlive us all....
WA****NGTON (AP) - The Beatles are about to become radio stars in a whole
new
way. NASA on Monday will broadcast the Beatles' song "Across the Universe"
across the galaxy to Polaris, the North Star.
This first-ever beaming of a radio song by the space agency directly into
deep space is nostalgia-driven. It celebrates the 40th anniversary of the
song, the 45th anniversary of NASA's Deep Space Network, which
communicates
with its distant probes, and the 50th anniversary of NASA.
"Send my love to the aliens," Paul McCartney told NASA through a Beatles
historian. "All the best, Paul."
The song, written by McCartney and John Lennon, may have a ticket to ride
and will be flying at the speed of light. But it will take 431 years along
a
long and winding road to reach its final destination. That's because
Polaris
is 2.5 quadrillion miles away.
NASA loaded an MP3 of the song, just under four minutes in its original
version, and will transmit it digitally at 7 p.m. EST Monday from its
giant
antenna in Madrid, Spain. But if you wanted to hear it on Polaris, you
would
need an antenna and a receiver to convert it back to music, the same way
people receive satellite television.
The idea came from Martin Lewis, a Los Angeles-based Beatles historian,
who
then got permission from McCartney, Yoko Ono and the two companies that
own
the rights to Beatles' music. One of those companies, Apple, was happy to
approve the idea because is "always looking for new markets," Lewis said.
Perhaps coincidentally, the song's launching comes a day before the
release
of the DVD of the Julie Taymor movie named after the Beatles hit.
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