We receive some strange press releases, but even by usual standards the one about the beaming of Keanu Reeves' new movie into space is going some.
It seems that this Friday the new version of The Day The Earth Stood Still is going to be broadcast into space for the viewing pleasure of anyone Out There. 20th Century Fox is making the broadcast to mark the movie's release, and the technical stuff is being handled by Florida company Deep Space Communications Network.
The film is a remake of the 1951 Robert Wise alien encounter classic, incidentally name-checked in the first couple of lines of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and stars Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates and John Cleese.
Deep Space Communications Network, based next to the Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canareval, is beaming the signal using "redundant high-powered klystron amplifiers connected by a traveling waveguide to a five meter parabolic dish antenna". It's being sent in the direction of Alpha Centauri, where it should arrive in about four years.
If you can't wait that long, it'll get to the Moon in about two seconds, Venus in around two and a half minutes, the Sun some six minutes later and Uranus in getting on for two and a half hours.
Out there, the film's sternest critics may be waiting...
