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Now might be a good time to brush up on your foil hat-making and bomb shelter-building skills.  On October 9th, a signal containing messages from 500 Bebo users will be beamed towards another planet with the goal of contacting intelligent life.

 Bebo's A Message From Earth

Why not something from a world leader?  Stephen Hawking?  Or even an old recording of Mr. Rogers or Bob Ross?  Well, RDF Media Group (the company behind "Wife Swap") is backing the idea, so there may not be much point in looking for sound reasons.  And living people are allowed to join Bebo and put forth their ideas, of course.

On to the schedule of A Message From Earth, then.  Although Bebo representatives didn't respond to a question about file sizes before press time, users will be able to submit images and text starting in early August.  Next, a vote should decide which 500 messages get sent into space by the RT-70 radar telescope.

The signal will take a little over 20 years to reach Gliese 581 c ("the nearest planet that could hold life," according to a release), and assuming any life forms on that end don't possess faster-than-light technology, a response (or armada) won't arrive here until 2049 at the earliest.

This creates an interesting opportunity for Bebo users, anyway.  And AOL's $850 million will look a lot better spent if we wind up with gifts of hover cars and cure-all medicines.