Time capsule to be beamed from Mexican pyramid

Mexico's Pyramid of the Sun will be the site of a new attempt to communicate with extraterrestrials. Picture / Reuters

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's Teotihuacan, once the centre of a sprawling pre-Hispanic empire, is set to become the launch pad from today for an attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life.

Starting today, enthusiasts from around the world will have a chance to submit text, images, video and sounds that reflect human nature to be included in the message.

Those contributions -- part of media company Yahoo's "Time Capsule" project -- will be digitalized and beamed with a laser into space on October 25 from the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, now an archeological site near Mexico City.

Archeologists say a culture centred in Teotihuacan, known as the City of the Gods, dominated Mesoamerica for hundreds of years during the first millennium. It is unclear what led to the society's collapse.

"We have this incredible ancient site and from that site we can project contemporary content," Srinija Srinivasan, Yahoo's editor in chief, told Reuters. "What is new is the ability to capture this information in such scale."

In the 1970s, astronomer Carl Sagan compiled a record with sounds and images, including a mariachi band and greetings in an ancient Sumerian language, to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.

His record was sent out with the Voyager spacecraft in the hope that extraterrestrial life forms would eventually find it.

- REUTERS