E.T. Tweet Home
If Steven Spielberg's E.T. were made today, everyone's favorite extraterrestrial wouldn't phone home, he would tweet.
The National Geographic Channel is planning to beam tweets into space, to coincide with its new series, "Chasing UFOs," according to Life's Little Mysteries.
All tweets made between 8 p.m. Friday and 3 a.m. Saturday (EDT), which are tagged with the hashtag #ChasingUFOs will be combined into a single message and sent into space, said Life's Little Mysteries.
Mashable said the tweets will be collected on July 29, under the hashtag #ufochasers.
The message from humanity is intended as a response to the mysterious Wow! signal which was received in 1977, according to Mashable.
The show focuses on the 72-second transmission which will be celebrating its 35th anniversary on August 15, the date that humanity's response is sent back into space via the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico.
"We are working with Arecibo Observatory to develop the best way to encrypt the transmission," said Kristin Montalbano, a spokeswoman for the National Geographic Channel, according to Life's Little Mysteries. She said they would likely use binary phase codes, or a sequence of 1s and 0s.
Mashable noted that the telescope that originally received the Wow! signal was demolished.
Steve Coulson, the creative director of Campfire, the marketing agency leading the project for National Geographic, told Mashable, "Recent research suggests that most, if not all stars, possibly have planets and we are narrowing down from two or three candidates with Arecibo Observatory’s help."
