It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s...a marketing campaign

Hey Aliens, want to take a trip to the Horse Capital of the World?

A laptop screen with a logo that says "LEX Mission 859" above a blue horse shooting lasers out of its eyes.

Caution: UFOs crossing. | Photo courtesy of VisitLEX

We’ve always known that Lexington is out of this world, so why not entice our extraterrestrial friends to see it for themselves?

In what is the world’s first interstellar tourism campaign, the team at VisitLEX and a group of scientists came together at the Kentucky Horse Park to beam a Lexington-specific message into space. Yeah, you read that right.

Using an infrared laser, the team was able to send a coded invitation to the TRAPPIST-1 solar system, just a measly 40 light years away, with messages highlighting:

  • Prime numbers
  • The symbol for water + ethanol (because, bourbon)
  • The symbol for dopamine
  • Images, such as horses and landscapes, representing Lexington
  • An audio recording from Tee Dee Young

While we wait for the message to get delivered in ~39 years, we want to know: If you had to create a Lexington itinerary for aliens, what would be on the agenda?

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