Today in TechMassive ads on Earth can be seen from space
50 years ago, pilots spotting huge designs in fields or other open areas might have been quick to assume aliens were responsible. Now, it seems aerial adventurers are more likely to spot an advertisement for a fast food chain than a set of crop circles created by otherworldly beings.
The picture you see above isn't a trick or a clever photoshop manipulation, it's a larger-than-life ad for fried chicken chain KFC. The massive logo, which is comprised of 65,000 square tiles, was built in 2006 on a chunk of land near Rachel, Nevada. The huge monument to greasy cuisine was built to celebrate the rebranding of the restaurant chain, but it has remained there ever since, making skyward travelers a bit hungrier on their journeys. The company boasted that it was the very first brand logo visible from space.
But this isn't the first time advertisers have used the Earth as their canvas. It's a tradition that stretches back to 1965, when the Readymix company plastered its moniker on a desert in Australia. Since then, brands like Coca-Cola and even a Canadian winemaker have used oversized ads to draw in customers. So the next time you think you see a message from an interstellar society, look again — it's probably just an ad for Starbucks.
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