Launch date: October 4, 2022
Distance passed: 0 mln. km
Arrival date: 11 Oct 2146
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Deep space radio message

Stihia festival sends a radio transmission into deep space using one of the most powerful deep space antennas in the world. 30 musicians and artists will contribute their pieces of music to the transmission.
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About the project

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. Carl Sagan once said “The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”

Stihia Festival is sending a radio transmission into deep space as a warning about global natural disasters. We are conducting this experiment to amplify the voice of intergenerational responsibility and reflect humanity's innate longing for the great unknown.

The radio message consists of musical and graphic elements, including Ulugh Beg’s stellar catalogue. This is also an open call for musicians to participate in this global experiment by sending us their pieces of work. The jury will pick the most suitable works and will include them in the radio message to be sent to the depths of space.

Signal

  • signal
    Ulugh Beg’s stellar atlas
    In 1437, Ulugbek, the greatest Samarkand scientist and astronomer, compiled a star catalogue using his own observatory. We are sending the coordinates of the stars from the original catalog, as well as the modern coordinates of the same stars. We want the inquisitive mind of man to be shown as a tool for perceiving the nature and creating wellbeing. We want to show that progress can and should be the bearer of a blessed dream of humanity.
cover
Ah!Kosmos
I don’t belong here
I imagined the voice travelling in space resonating and questioning belonging in the emptiness. It sings “I don’t belong here”
  • Ah!Kosmos
    I don’t belong here
  • Aril Brikha
    Dance of a Trillion Stars
  • Dzenpunk
    Sea
  • Eduard Artemyev
    The beauty of the Earth
  • e.v.e
    FWIF
  • Flyin Up
    I’ll be forming weather
  • Galya Bisengalieva
    Zhalanash
  • Kebato
    229484
  • Maria Breslavets
    Zinn
  • Nina Kraviz
    Peace for stihia
  • Pink Floyd
    Shine on You Crazy Diamond
  • Polar Inertia
    Kinematic Optics
  • Saphileaum
    Cosmic Lake Transparency
  • The Comet is Coming
    Journey Through Asteroid Belt
  • Vladimir Dubyshkin
    I decided to fly
  • Prisheletz
    Peace to the world
  • IDA
    Avaruus
  • Sabina
    Deep Breath
  • DJ Hyamich
    K1616
  • Alien Rain
    Weltall, Erde, Mensch

Journey of the signal

Earth
This is our world. A warm, cosy place. The signal begins its journey from Cornwall, UK, using one of the most powerful radio telescopes in the world. Space is not that far. Only some 100 kilometres upwards. An hour by a car. Down there, on Earth, life is in full swing, billions of people are involved in interaction, stock trading does not stop, TV shows are running, people are born, live and die. Human activities, especially over the past 100 years, have significantly changed the face of the Earth. While change is also part of nature, that which we are responsible for must be controlled. This is how we can save our home.
Moon
After 1.25 seconds, the signal flies through the orbit of the Moon. A familiar, safe place. The Moon has always amazed us with its appearance and the fact of its existence. There are three currently dominant hypotheses about the origin of the Moon: the Earth and the Moon could have formed together from one protoplanetary cloud; the Moon could be "captured" by the Earth; or the Moon could have formed as a result of a giant collision of the Earth with another celestial body, and this is nowadays the most probable cause. There were also propositions that the Earth had several moons in the past and they subsequently merged into one celestial body, or even that the Moon could have “leaked” out from the Earth in the form of a magmatic clot due to centrifugal force.
Mars
Next, the signal flies through the orbit of the Mars. For centuries we have searched for life on the Mars. It occupies our imagination more than other planets. A couple of hundred years ago, Mars was believed to be inhabited. Apparently, there were life processes billions of years ago, and there was water on its surface. But now it is a giant fossil. NASA's Curiosity rover found only dry lakes on the planet's surface, confirming that Mars had water in the past. Also, the data gathered by the Marsis radar installed at the Mars Express interplanetary station, suggests that there may be a subsurface lake.
Asteroid belt
After just over 15 minutes, the signal reached the asteroid belt, a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. Most likely, the belt is a planet that was never able to form, mainly due to the gravitational influence of the Jupiter. Asteroid mining can prove to be crucial for further space exploration. The minerals contained in asteroids are a good source of iron, nickel and titanium. Some asteroids contain water-bearing minerals, that can be used to extract the water and oxygen necessary to sustain life, as well as hydrogen - one of the main components of rocket fuel. One of the current interesting candidates for an extraction mission is the asteroid 2011 UW/158, which is in close proximity from us and is estimated to contain platinum worth of 300 billion to 5.4 trillion dollars.
Ceres
Seven minutes after entering the asteroid belt, the signal reaches the orbit of Ceres. It is a dwarf planet, but previously it was considered a planet. With a diameter of about 950 km, Ceres is the largest and most massive body in the asteroid belt. It is larger than the satellites of the giant planets and contains almost a third of the total mass of the belt. The analysis of its density suggests that one third of it is made of water ice. In January 2014, Herschel infrared telescope detected clouds of water vapor around Ceres. Thus, Ceres became the fourth celestial body in the Solar System with proven water on its surface (after Earth, Enceladus, and possibly Europa).
Jupiter
The signal passes by the orbit of Jupiter. It is a giant with 600 km/h hurricanes raging in its thick atmosphere. Jupiter is mainly composed of hydrogen and helium and has no solid surface. The most commonly accepted model for Jupiter's structure suggests that it consists of an atmosphere, a layer of metallic hydrogen and a rocky core. It is a big mystery how Jupiter emits more energy than it receives from the Sun. Astronomers speculate that this is due to the gradual gravitational contraction of the planet. The Jupiter also serves as a "springboard" for spacecrafts leaving the Solar System. A gravitational manoeuvre in the vicinity of the planet allows for a significant increase in speed and the shortening of flight times.
Saturn
We often dream about this planet. Saturn is the jewel in the crown of the Solar System. It is a giant ball of gas, but so light it could float on a water. The first person to suggest that Saturn is surrounded by a ring was Christian Huygens. The famous rings are perhaps the debris of the planet’s destroyed satellite. An incomparable beauty created by destruction. The belt consists of a billion ice floes ranging in size from that of sugar cubes houses. Despite the fact that the rings are stretched for millions of kilometres, they are only no more than 10 meters thick. One of the Saturn's most famous landmarks is the Hexagon – a hexagonal vortex on its north pole. No one really understands the nature of this phenomenon. The signal flies through the orbit of Saturn, and from this distance we begin to lose visual contact with Earth.
Uranus
The signal is at the orbital distance of Uranus, the ice giant. People have observed this planet even before William Herschel, its ‘discoverer’, but usually mistook it for a star. Up to 80% of the Uranus consists of liquids and it has a solid core. Monstrous storms rage periodically on the surface of Uranus at a speed of almost 900 km/h, covering an area the size of the North American continent. For some unknown reason, Uranus rotates "lying on its side", since its axis is tilted 99 degrees. Uranus' atmosphere is the coldest known, with a temperature of about -224 degrees Celsius. Uranus is the least studied planet in the Solar System.
Neptune
The signal reached the orbital distance of Neptune, the farthest planet in the Solar System. Neptune is the first planet that was discovered due to mathematical calculations and fluctuations in the orbit of the Uranus. The atmosphere of Neptune consists mainly of compounds of helium and hydrogen and the planet has the strongest winds in the Solar System. Winds blow at staggering speeds of 2400 km/h - even more than in the frenzied atmosphere of Uranus. Winds on Earth are controlled by the Sun, but Neptune is too far from it. Something else must be causing these fierce winds, but no one knows what exactly.
Pluto
In 2006, Pluto lost its planetary status due to the absence of a so-called "clean orbit". Nevertheless, it is the extremely interesting "dwarf" of our solar system. Pluto, like many comets, is roughly half rock and ice. If it was closer to the Sun, then it would “grow” a tail and turned into a comet. Pluto has an atmosphere that freezes when away from the Sun, but as it approaches the Sun, the atmosphere begins to evaporate. Due to the peculiarities of its orbit, Pluto can come closer to the Sun than Neptune. Previously, astronomers thought that the Pluto was alone and there was nothing beyond it. Today scientists count more than 3000 trans-Neptunian objects.
Kuiper belt
The signal is currently passing through the Kuiper belt. It is a circumstellar disc that begins beyond Neptune and contains thousands of objects. We don't know what is happening at its outer edge or even how far it is, but we do know that it is extremely far. The Kuiper belt is important in understanding the origin and dynamics of the Solar System. Previously, the Solar System was depicted as a watch mechanism: a set of planets orbiting the Sun in a relaxed, stable, predictable and even boring way. After the discovery of the Kuiper belt, and especially the resonant objects that make the planets migrate, the picture has completely changed. Our solar system no longer fits the neat model that we imagined before.
Eris
Surfing through the Kuiper belt, the signal travels through the orbit of Eris, a dwarf planet. Until 2006, Eris had a chance to receive the status of the tenth planet. But after Pluto was reclassified from an ordinary planet to a dwarf one, Eris lost this chance. Due to the fact that its surface is constantly covered with methane snow, Eris reflects almost 96% of light, making it one of the brightest objects in the night sky. Interestingly, after its discovery, astronomers studied archival photographs and found Eris on many of them. Looks like it could have been discovered back in 1954, if they knew where to look.
Heliopause
The signal approaches the edge of the heliosphere and leaves the Solar System. This is the boundary where the solar wind collides with interstellar matter and gradually stops. This region separating the interstellar medium from the matter of the Solar System is called the heliopause. This bubble shaped sphere, stretched out in the direction opposite to the movement of the Sun, is filled with hot hydrogen and is called the hydrogen wall. From this moment, the signal enters interstellar voyage.
Voyager-1
Our signal has flown a distance equal to the that travelled by the first man-made object that left the Solar System. Voyager-1, the fastest man-made object, accelerated to a speed of over 62 thousand km/h and in September 2013, piercing the heliosphere, officially enteredinterstellar space. This robot was launched in 1977 and has done a huge amount of research during the flight, becoming one of the most successful projects in the history of astronautics. It holds the record for the farthest photograph of the Earth, called the "Pale blue dot" that was taken from a breath-taking distance of more than 6 billion kilometres from Earth. Voyager-1 has a long, if not endless future. Millions of years later, if nothing stops it, it will fly to other stars.
Planet 9
The signal flew to a mysterious planet that supposedly exists in the Kuiper belt, beyond the Pluto's orbit. Nobody has seen this planet yet. Astronomers only assume its presence, based on statistical anomalies of the orbits of dwarf planets. There are several hypotheses for its origin, including that Planet 9 is the nucleus of a nascent gas giant that was pushed out by Jupiter during the formation of the Solar System. Some scientists think that Planet 9 is nothing but a tiny black hole 4-5 centimetres in size and with a mass of five Earths. The Japanese Subaru telescope at an observatory in Hawaii will be searching for this mysterious planet over the coming years.
Sedna
The signal is approaching the orbital range of the Sedna, a trans-Neptunian object named after the Eskimo goddess of sea animals. Sedna has a very elongated orbit and is one of the most distant known objects in the Solar System, with the exception of some long-period comets. The surface of the Sedna is one of the reddest in the Solar System due to the high presence of tholin. See how amazing it looks in the artist's view.
Oort cloud
After a year and a half, the signal goes beyond the hypothetical Oort cloud. The Oort cloud is believed to be the remnant of the original protoplanetary disk that formed around the Sun about 4.6 billion years ago and is composed primarily of icy objects. According to various estimates, the Oort cloud contains from several hundred billion to several trillion objects with a radius of one kilometre or more. We still cannot observe the cloud, but we can observe objects from the Oort cloud when they pass relatively close to the Sun in the form of long-period comets (those with an orbital period of more than 200 years). Voyager 1 should reach the Oort cloud in 300 years and it will take another 30,000 years to go beyond it.
Epsilon Eridani
On the way to its destination, the signal travels the distance to one of the nearest stars, a K2 star in the constellation Eridanus. A debris disk was discovered around this star at a distance close to the Kuiper belt's distance from our Sun. Astronomers interpreted the Doppler measurements as the presence of dust ring clumps that could be caused by the existence of a planet orbiting this star. According to the data received from telescopes, the star has a Jupiter-like planet.
GJ 436b
Astronomers announced the discovery of a planet called GJ 436b in 2010, but things kept getting weirder with more observation. In 2015, astronomers announced that GJ 436b, which is roughly 22 times as massive as Earth, had a huge gas cloud streaming away from it for millions of miles. Follow-up observations announced in 2017 revealed the planet's orbit is also bizarre, as it goes over the star's poles. That's very different from our own solar system, where the planets' orbits gather around the Sun's equator.
Denebola
The signal is in close proximity to the Denebola, which is translated from Arabic as "lion's tail". It is a relatively young star of spectral class A with an age estimated at less than 400 million years. Denebola is part of the IC 2391 supercluster. The radius of the star, determined using interferometry, is approximately 1.73 times the radius of the Sun. There may be a cold debris disk around the star, making Denebola a good candidate for exoplanet searches.
Regulus
The signal is in close proximity to Regulus, the brightest star of the first magnitude in the constellation of Leo and one of the brightest stars in the night sky. Regulus is four times the size of the Sun and has a spectral type of B7 V/K1-2 V/M5 V. It is a young star, only a few hundred million years old. It spins extremely fast, with a rotation period of only 15.9 hours, giving it a highly flattened, pumpkin-like shape. Regulus may look like a single star but it is in fact it is a four-star system.
K2-18b
The star K2-18 (EPIC 201912552) is a faint red dwarf a bit more than quadrillion kilometres away from the Earth. It is not visible to the naked eye. Through a telescope, it can be observed in the western part of the constellation Leo, next to the star Wolf 359. At least two planets orbit the star. One of them is K2-18b. We wonder what it looks like from its surface? Is there intelligent life? A distant, lost world at a distance so vast that it is beyond our comprehension.
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scale EARTHMOONMARSASTEROIDBELTCERESJUPITERSATURNURANUSNEPTUNEPLUTOKUIPERBELTERISHELIOPAUSEVOYAGER-1PLANET 9SEDNAOORTCLOUDEPSILONERIDANIGJ 436BDENEBOLAREGULUSK2-18B

Participate

If you are a musician, a composer, a creative community, a music band or just a dreamer, you can participate in this project by creating a music track and submitting it to us. Please read the requirements and rules at our site. If your creation is unique and impressive, it will be included into the Transmission and sent into the deep space.
I want to participate

Partners

  • partners
    STIHIA
    Stihia is electronic music, art and science festival with the mission of attaining sustainable development in the town of Muynak, Uzbekistan. It runs annually since 2018 and raises awareness about the death of the Aral Sea. The festival consists of several multidisciplinary projects aimed at research, development and entertainment.
    stihia.org
  • partners
    Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd.
    Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd. The UK’s space communications gateway, Goonhilly has more than 30 satellite communication antennas. The company offers the world’s first commercial deep space network, providing necessary additional capacity beyond that of NASA and ESA. Its modified 30m and 32m antennas allow for cost-effective communications with key missions to the Moon, Mars, and the L1 and L2 Lagrange points, as well as other spacecraft across the solar system.
    goonhilly.org
  • partners
    Ulugh Beg Astronomical Institute (UBAI)
    Ulugh Beg Astronomical Institute (UBAI) of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences is the oldest scientific institution in Central Asia. It was founded as Tashkent Astronomical observatory in 1873. Since the end of the 19th century UBAI was involved to the International Latitude Service. Kitab station of UBAI was one of five stations of the ILS network. Today Kitab is hosting the ground-based beacon of the GPS satellite navigation system. UBAI is presently involved in many international space programs aimed at
    astrin.uz

FAQ

  • What is Stihia?
    Stihia is electronic music, arts and science festival. It is an independent project incepted in 2017 in Uzbekistan with an aim to raise awareness about the environmental catastrophe of the Aral Sea. "Stihia" means "force of nature" and it comes from Greek. The festival consists of several projects that involve musicians, DJs, producers, artists, and scientists.
  • What is the mission of this project?
    We believe that the topic of climate change should be addressed in every possible way however unusual it may be. The project is first of all a result of the great collaboration of astrophysicists, radio astronomers, musicians, producers and enthusiasts. We believe that the signal should be a warning bearer for future generations.
  • Who is behind the project?
    The project was initiated by Stihia festival and is supported Mirzo-Ulugbeg Insitute of Astronomy of Uzbekistan. Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd (UK) are kindly transmitting the signal into deep space.
  • What makes up the signal?
    The signal consists of a combination of sound and graphic elements. The audio part consists of fifteen-second pieces of music and the graphic part consists of dynamic coordinates of stars from Ulugh Beg’s stellar catalogue and a combination of other graphic elements. The entire radio message will be encoded and presented in binary code.
  • Who is Ulugh Beg and why it is important to send his stellar catalogue?

    Ulugh Beg was a great scientist, a visionary who lived in Samarkand in 15th century and represented the forefront of the then fundamental science. His observatory was considered by scholars to have been one of the finest observatories in the Islamic world at the time and the largest in Central Asia.

    We are not just sending his stellar catalogues – we are sending coordinates of the stars from his catalogue of 1437 and also the present coordinates of the same stars. This is crucial, as stars have moved in last almost 600 years and by sending the coordinates in dynamics, we are able to send a symbolic demonstration that we, humans, are capable of scientific and technological progress. Perhaps one day, this progress will allow us to overcome the pressing environmental challenges of our time?

  • How the acoustic works are selected?

    These are the tracks from previous and upcoming Stihia line-ups. We also approached other artists, including Eduard Artemyev, the father of Soviet electronic music, who wrote soundtracks for most of Tarkovskiy’s movies, and has been supporting our festival from day one.

    The selection of acoustic works is carried out by the special jury. Such works should primarily be centered around the issue of a negative impact on climate. We do not know how to express it exactly, but we rely on your talent and taste. Use your imagination.

  • Who can take part in a contest?
    Any professional or novice musician from planet Earth can take part in the contest. The main selection criterion is that the work must be your own production and must correlate with your inner voice of calling for environmental protection. Use your imagination. Other requirements for tracks are: 1) duration - no less and no more than 15 seconds, 2) format - mp3, 3) genre – preferably electronic, but it also can be anything progressive or catchy, 4) title - give a good punch line, as your heart suggests.
  • What shall be the format of the signal?
    Sending radio messages into the deep space is always a complex process that requires careful administration and technology. Lots of complex regulatory issues must be resolved including on inter-governmental level. It is crucial to pick the right time for transmission, and it can prove very difficult to find the right “window” as radio telescopes are usually heavily booked with interstellar and interplanetary missions. On the top of that, even though radio telescopes are very sophisticated instruments, it is difficult to find one with the right capacities. We are talking about launching a signal of enormous power with the aim of delivering it to its destination in more than 100 light years away from the Earth. These are insanely gigantic distances. Therefore, the signal should be as simplified and focused as possible. That is why the radio message is encoded in binary code, and the sampling rate and PCM coding of is only 8 kilohertz.
  • When the transmission shall be made?
    4 October 2022. The timing was chosen taking into account the remoteness of the Sun, which, from the point of view of radio astronomy, is the most undesirable element as it distorts and obscures most of the signals.
  • Who shall transmit the signal?
    The signal is transmitted with one of the most powerful radio telescopes in the world: the 32-meter antenna of Goonhilly Earth Station, located in Cornwall, UK.
  • What are the chances of success?
    It all depends on what is considered to be a success. For musicians, success has already happened. Just imagine, their works will be making an interstellar journey, through cosmic depths for more than 120 years. Becoming a part of this story is a tremendous privilege and success for all project participants.
  • What is exoplanet?
    An exoplanet is a planet that is located outside our solar system. For a long time, detecting planets near other stars remained impossible, since such planets are extremely small and dim in comparison with the stars, and the stars themselves are far from the Sun. The first exoplanets were discovered in the late 1980s. Thanks to improved scientific methods and technology, exoplanets are easier to discover nowadays. As of December 6, 2020, the existence of 4379 exoplanets in 3237 planetary systems has been reliably confirmed, of which 717 has more than one planet. The number of reliable candidates for exoplanets is much larger. Thus, according to the Kepler project, as of January 2020, there were 2,420 more candidates, and according to the TESS project, as of January 2020, 1,082 candidates. The total number of exoplanets in our galaxy is estimated at no less than 100 billion, of which 5 to 20 billion are possibly Earth-like.
  • What is special about TRAPPIST-1 and K2-18b?

    Аccording to the confirmed data, today it is most likely that these exoplanets are the only exoplanets that are both in the habitable zone and that have water in the atmosphere. Also, there are three potentially habitable exoplanets in TRAPPIST-1 system, which increase chances of contact with alien civilisation.

    Water in atmosphere is an important factor indicating the presence of water surfance on the exoplanets, and therefore significantly increases the likelihood of life.

  • Where can we spot K2-18b on sky and can we observe it in telescope?
    The exoplanet lies in the constellation Leo, which is the constellation of the northern hemisphere. It is still impossible to see the exoplanet through a telescope due to the lack of existing facilities. This is how a star looks through a telescope, around which an exoplanet orbits, and this is how K2-18b looks from orbit in the artist's view. K2-18b is expected to be observed with the James Webb Space Telescope, due to launch in 2021, and the ARIEL Space Telescope, due to launch in 2028. Both will be telescope instruments designed to determine the composition of the atmospheres of exoplanets.
  • Why do humans send signals into deep space?
    The purpose of Stihia Beyond project is about raising awareness about humanity’s impact on Earth’s environment. We hope that by sending this symbolic message into the lifeless void of space, we are in fact sending a message back to ourselves – that we must take better care of our own precious home planet.