Emails boldly go where no one has gone before

A bizarre group of American entrepreneurs has started a project that aims to let members of the public beam messages for aliens into space.

The team at Talktoaliens.com has erected a 10.5m parabolic dish in Connecticut and is beaming messages out to space at 2.43211GHz.

"Based on discussions with astronomy consultants, we decided to point our antenna into the area of the sky with the highest density of regional stars, and thus hopefully planets and other civilisations," the company's website stated.

"That region is commonly referred to as the 'Milky Way', the galaxy in which our own solar system resides. As the sky appears to turn over the earth, our fixed-mounted parabolic antenna sweeps through much of the Milky Way and its estimated 400 billion stars."

Those who want to take part have to call a premium rate line and pay $3.99 per minute to have their messages beamed out into the ether. Users are not censored but are asked to be "good Earth ambassadors" when they call.

In the future the team plans to modify the system to allow instant messages, SMS and pictures to be sent where no one has gone before.