SUFFOLK is set to be the international linchpin of a project involving the world's most exciting and ambitious science experiment - to send a message to the stars.

Richard Cornwell

SUFFOLK is set to be the international linchpin of a project involving the world's most exciting and ambitious science experiment - to send a message to the stars.

With scientists on the other side of the world becoming convinced there are millions of planets with a potential for life, the Suffolk coast has been chosen because of its “gateway to the stars” status.

Felixstowe will this year become the third point of a triangle that also involves the new Kepler research rocket, which has recently blasted off to search for human life in the Cosmos, and the Hadron Collider mission in Geneva.

Later this month, a cross Channel hook-up is taking place with the Hadron Collider... using its phenomenal power to enable lights on cranes at Felixstowe port, Britain's biggest container terminal, to send light beams 300 million miles into space.

The cranes' lights will spell out the message “Welcome to the World” - a greeting to extra terrestrials living on other planets in galaxies far, far away.

Port bosses have now installed the last of 33 giant “giraffe” like cranes, each with their own set of lights - and because they all have hydraulic pivot points, they can be pointed at the stars.

Details of the fantastic light show were unveiled today as a response to the growing interest in UFOs. Suffolk has been chosen for the experiment because of the cranes and the fact that many ufologists believe the county has a portal to the stars - a special invisible time-and-space gateway, a doorway aliens use to visit us.

Brenda Butler, an expert on UFOs who lectures all over the country, is convinced there is a portal - probably centred over the Rendlesham area but covering the whole of the east of the county - and says there are constant UFO visits to Suffolk and she receives reports of sightings weekly.

So far this year The Evening Star has reported strange lights in the sky between Kesgrave, Grundisburgh and Framsden, at Felixstowe, Leiston and Aldeburgh - many remain a mystery.

The work has been taking place in secret for many months to lay the power line beneath the North Sea to connect the port to the Hadron Collider near the Franco-Swiss border.

At night, the experiment - the search for dark matter and the meaning of life - sees huge bursts of power going to waste - and that's where Felixstowe comes in.

The power will surge into the cranes during the night - allowing them to tilt skywards. The process will take a few minutes and the message to the stars will be relayed for an hour at a time.

As part of the design work for this, when the cranes are put into their new lower positions, the lights will spell out words “Welcome to the World”.

Port bosses have agreed with the Proof Ap Li Project (Proof Alien People Live) to test the cranes on World UFO Day in July with the message displayed that night.

They have been given the help of experts from all over the world to help - and are said to be delighted the power source will be a gift from the Geneva-based Hadron project.

One of the team, Durban-based ufologist Uf bin-Had said: “I think it is a really nice gesture - we would welcome contact with extra terrestrials and I think this would show we mean them no harm.

“Our belief is that they visit earth regularly to take soil samples, study our atmosphere and technology and the way we treat our environment, and I think they would be fools not to take up our simple hand of friendship.”

- Should we be making more effort to contact life on other planets?

Write to Your Letters, Evening Star, 30 Lower Brook Street, Ipswich, IP4 1AN, or e-mail you comments to: eveningstarletters@eveningstar.co.uk and log on to www.eveningstar.co.uk to visit Stargate Suffolk for up to date news of the unexplained.

- Additional reporting by Alf Pooril

Kepler Probe facts:-

- NASA launched the Kepler Probe recently with the aim of finding earth-like planets in other parts of the galaxy. It is programmed to look for planets in the “goldilocks” solar systems zone that are not too hot and not too cold to sustain life.

- The craft is due to spend three and a half years in orbit around the sun looking for planets like the earth.

Large Hadron Collider facts:-

- When the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was switched on last year, there were some who thought the world would end at that moment - the planet swallowed by a black hole it would create.

- It is the most powerful physics experiment ever built - scientists' aim was to re-create the conditions just after the Big Bang in an attempt to answer the basic questions of science and the universe.

- It can generate light which travels 50 times faster than normal light and can be seen on other planets with potential for life within light days, not years.

- The LHC is positioned near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100 metres underground.

- The machine sends tiny particles called hadrons smashing into each other at enormous speed and scientists will study the fragments this leaves.