Junk food or junk science?: Six hours worth of advertising for Doritos chips have been beamed out in to space as a signal to other life forms that there's crispy, tasty, good times available on Earth.
Courtesy ீ ๑ AdamWe can’t escape advertising, can we? It’s there along the roadside, imbedded on the results of our web search and even on the bathroom stall wall. And now it’s off into space.

Six-straight hours of Doritos advertising have been beamed out into space from a European space station located on a Norwegian island in the Arctic Circle. The message is directed at the Ursa Major constellation, which is just 42 light years from Earth. That location was targeted as astronomers figure it has the best chances of hosting a planet that can support life forms, and potential Doritos eaters.

And while the effects of advertising are always hard to measure, these space scientists aren’t expecting the message to have a huge impact on Doritos sales. The actual advertisement has been broken down into a MPEG file that is just a series of “0s” and “1s”. The hope is that any one receiving the message will understand it as a message coming across with some intelligence and to perk the receiver’s curiosity in wanting to see where it came from.

But I ask you, is it really intelligent to try to entice an alien to come 42 light years to Earth in the hope of getting some Doritos? After all, the package expiration date doesn’t come close to lasting that long.

Actually, Doritos made a donation to the space station in exchange for having its advertisement sent into space. But I ask you, what kind of message would you send out into space to encourage intelligent life to come investigate Earth?

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