Lexington beams commercial into space to attract alien tourists

Lexington, Kentucky wants space aliens to think of their city when considering a visit to Earth. 

This was the message that a group of Kentucky scientists, linguists and scholars recently beamed by deep-space laser to a nearby galaxy in the the very first interstellar travel advertisement.

VisitLEX, the group at the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau, is behind the effort. The message was sent last month from Lexington's Kentucky Horse Park museum and event center.

They aimed the message at the TRAPPIST-1 star system, which lies 40 light-years from Earth and harbors multiple potentially habitable planets.

A light-year is a measure of the distance it takes light to travel in a year; so, it will take 40 years for the message to cover 235 trillion miles for any aliens to see it.

Meanwhile, the effort has gotten a lot of earthbound attention from geeky fans on Space.com, Popular Science, and the late-night UFO radio show, "Coast to Coast AM." 

A Youtube video of the event is also making the rounds on social media, and can be found here .