NASA beams Across the Universe into space

For the first time ever, NASA will beam a song -- The Beatles' "Across the Universe" -- directly into deep space at 7 p.m. EST on Feb. 4.

The transmission over NASA's Deep Space Network will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the day The Beatles recorded the song, as well as the 50th anniversary of NASA's founding and the group's beginnings. Two other anniversaries also are being honored: The launch 50 years ago this week of Explorer 1, the first U.S. satellite, and the founding 45 years ago of the Deep Space Network, an international network of antennas that supports missions to explore the universe.

I'm sure there are people who study this, but I really like the idea of missives that are absent one of their critical components -- sender, message or recipient. For example, and in order, messages in a bottle, burned love letters, and this: radio transmissions into space. I think there's a special kind of tension created by this topos*, a suspended chord that can stay unresolved for years, centuries, forever, and in that suspension hold all manner of rich emotion: hope, love and longing.

And what a container to choose -- the poetry of Paul McCartney. Nothing's gonna change my world. A beautiful irony considering that, if a recipient is ever found, and the chord resolved, everything will change. And give new meaning to this: Limitless undying love that shines around me like a million suns/ It calls me on and on across the universe.

* minz informs me that i mean topos, not trope, and she is, i think, right.