Scientists Just Sent an Invite for Alien Life to Visit Earth

 Scientists blasted a message to the heavens in Lexington, Kentucky in the fall of 2023. The message was aimed toward a solar system that was 40 lightyears away. Far enough away that anybody living today would have some trouble reaching it, but not far enough to keep visitors from hearing it and popping in.

It’s a message translated into binary and it reads, “Hey, Aliens! Look at Lexington.” It’s a Jeff Foxworthy joke that seems to write itself. Yes, researchers in Kentucky took the time to shoot a message into space that will travel 40 years to TRAPPIST-1, the planetary system with the most habitable Earth-sized planets outside of our own galaxy, and at the end, it says, “hey look!”

Thankfully much more is included within, hoping to draw the visitors (or invaders, we don’t know) to Lexington and the “horse capital of the world,” though the title is self-proclaimed according to Forbes. But the end goal is the same as millions of others across the globe. The folks in Kentucky want to invite the interstellar neighbors over for a cookout and for those grand tourism bucks.

“With heightened interest in space exploration and celestial events, we wanted to be the first tourism brand to think way outside the box when it comes to marketing to a whole new type of potential visitor,” VisitLEX President Mary Quinn Ramer explained. “We believe that Lexington is the best place on Earth, and that many of the attributes of our destination would give extraterrestrials a great first impression-like our bucolic horse pastures with wide open spaces, award-winning bourbon, and an eclectic blend of inspiring arts and sciences.”

The message also includes “photos, music and symbols for the elements of life on Earth like carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen,” according to Forbes. They also made sure to include the recipe for water, something that people who watched Signs are screaming about right now.

If this is just a big tie-in for Netflix’s adaptation, people can’t be sitting too comfortably. Then again, we could always hope for a Childhood’s End scenario, though that one still ends poorly for Planet Earth.