Kentucky’s strange tourism campaign welcomes extraterrestrial beings

Friday, January 12, 2024

With an eye toward the future, Lexington, Kentucky, known as the “horse capital of the world,” has launched a strange tourism campaign. With the help of its innovative program “Hey Aliens!,” the city anticipates a significant increase in tourism by the year 2123. 

Lexington, Kentucky’s unique tourism campaign, “Hey Aliens! Look at Lexington,” targets potential extraterrestrial visitors near TRAPPIST-1, a dwarf star orbited by at least seven planets, some potentially habitable. TRAPPIST-1 is about 40 light years away, a vast distance for communication. If aliens have light-speed travel, it would take 40 years to reach Lexington. The city is prepared for inquiries about accommodations from these distant travelers. The campaign showcases Lexington’s creativity and desire to attract diverse visitors, even those from beyond our planet.

Crafting the transmission was a collaborative effort involving local scientists, scholars, and tourism officials. The actual message is a coded bitmap with important information about its source and intent. Together with these encoded components, it also includes audio recordings of local blues musician Tee Dee Young’s music and visual depictions of Lexington’s beautiful scenery.

Lexington is ready for the prospect of hearing from these fictitious space travelers regarding lodging, even though the campaign’s target market is speculative. The humorous tone of the campaign emphasizes Lexington’s openness to trying out novel approaches to draw tourists and highlight its distinct personality.

Dr. Andrew Byrd, a linguistics specialist working on the project, stressed the meaning of the bitmap image, saying it represents the essence of life, Lexington’s recognizable rolling hills, and the molecular structures of dopamine, bourbon, and water—all of which add to the dynamic nature of the city.

The bitmap image represents life’s essence, the distinctive rolling hills of Lexington, and the molecular structures of water, bourbon, and dopamine, all of which contribute to the city’s vibrant character, according to Dr. Andrew Byrd, a linguistics expert who worked on the project.

An infrared laser was used to enable the transmission, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted formal approval. With this creative campaign, Lexington has demonstrated that it is prepared to try new things in order to draw tourists and show off its distinct character to a larger audience—including prospective visitors from far-off galaxies. 

[Image Source: Popular Science]

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