transmissions 📡

to celebrate its 25th anniversary, Sónar is broadcasting two signals towards GJ273b, a potentially habitable exoplanet located 12.4 light years from Earth in the constellation of Canis Minor. working with the Catalonia Institute of Space Studies and METI International (Messaging Extra-terrestrial Intelligence), the project involves 33 artists linked to the festival, including Laurent Garnier, The Black Madonna, Kode 9 and Daito Manabe

the first transmission was sent in October from the parabolic steerable antenna pictured, located at the EISCAT facility in Ramfjordmoen, near Tromsø, Norway. the second will be beamed out into deep space this April, and your music could be part of it – just submit an original composition in any genre or musical style before 1 March 2018

both signals will reach the Luyten Star system around 2030. also known as GJ 273, the red dwarf star is located in the Canis Minor constellation at a distance of 3.79 parsecs from Earth. as the musical message organisers explain, "It is a much cooler star than our Sun with a temperature of around 3,000ºC (compared to the Sun’s 5,500ºC) and is therefore more reddish in colour. We estimate a mass and a radius that is approximately one third of our sun’s. The star is not visible without a telescope. It was named after a Dutch-American astronomer, Willem Jacob Luyten, who measured its movement (compared to other distant stars)."

"In 2017, Luyten announced the discovery of two orbiting planets. One of them, with a mass almost three times greater than the Earth, is located in the innermost edge of the habitable zone of the star. Its year is equivalent to 19 days on our own planet. It is called the Luyten Star b. This planet also has a nearby smaller neighbour with a mass 30% more than that of our own planet and whose year lasts around 5 days, it is called Luyten’s Star c. We do not know if Luyten’s Star b has water, nor if retains an atmosphere that makes it habitable. But presently we also have no reason to think otherwise. If it did, it would be a world with oceans like ours, perhaps hotter, with a sky lit by a star larger in appearance than the sun, shining with a reddish glow."

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for more on the project, visit www.sonarcalling.com