In a move that is part blatant self-promotion, and part so-crazy-it-might-just-work, The National Geographic Channel is preparing to collect your tweets this Friday, then broadcast them into space via the world-famous Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico this August.
The channel is producing a show about the so-called Wow signal, a 72-second transmission from space received in 1977. The extremely unusual frequency of the signal is why it’s still one of the high points of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It’s also why the astronomer who picked it up wrote “wow!” in the margins of his printout.
To mark the 35th anniversary of the signal — and heavily promote its show UFO Chasers — the channel is asking you to tweet on July 29 with the hashtag #ufochasers. The resulting tweets will be sent via Arecibo on August 15.
Sent where, exactly? There’s the rub. We don’t know where the telescope that received the Wow signal was pointing, and it has since been demolished to make way for a golf course. The National Geographic Channel’s partners tell Mashable they’re still working with Arecibo on promising points in the sky to broadcast a radio signal. Apparently, they have it narrowed down to three candidate locations.
Wondering how on this pale blue dot that’s all going to work? So did we. And we got some answers, below, from Steve Coulson, Creative Director of Campfire, the marketing agency leading this effort for National Geographic.
How exactly are the tweets going to be sent into space?
We’re going to be using the enormous radar transmitter at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which is the largest single aperture telescope ever built. You might recognize it from Contact, The X Files and Goldeneye (especially the N64 version)! It’s also the facility that SETI@Home uses as a primary source for their data, and was the location from which a rudimentary message was sent out into space in 1974. If we want our transmission to be received by another civilization, Arecibo is our surest bet.
Where in the cosmos will it be pointing? How long would it take to get there?
The Big Ear Telescope that received the original Wow Signal has been demolished to make way for a golf course, so unfortunately we have to use a facility that points to a different area of the sky. But as the universe is constantly in motion and the message will take many years to reach its destination, it’s more art than science in determining where to send it.
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. And don’t forget, this project coincides with the premiere of National Geographic Channel’s “Chasing UFOs”, so there’s always the chance that our message could be intercepted by anyone who happens to be flying by closer to Earth.
Once we have exact details for how we’ll reply, we’ll be posting an article detailing the process onthewowreply.com.
Is there any reason to suppose this data will be faster or stronger than regular TV and radio signals?
Unfortunately we’re not able to bend the laws of the universe and all electromagnetic waves travel at the same speed. Certainly using Arecibo makes our signal much stronger than all those random waves, and more likely to be received and recognized as a purposeful message by scientists on other planets.
More importantly, unlike all those mass media broadcasts from the early days of radio and television, this message is completely crowdsourced, written by the people of Planet Earth, unfiltered and uncensored, and created specifically as a message to the stars.
So while it may not be faster or stronger, it could be more representative of who we are as a society and how we define ourselves.
And while we want to make sure that we’re giving our signal the best chance of being received, what we’re really interested in here is the social experiment – giving anyone with a Twitter account the opportunity to individually say something to an interstellar neighbor. It’s very empowering and the logical extension of the transformation we’ve seen as we all change from consumers to producers, 140 characters at a time.
Twitter provides a platform for anyone to send a message to the world, and now, for one time only they’ll have the chance to send their tweets to another world.
Would there be any way to unencrypt the tweets at the other end, presuming ET isn’t using Twitter?
What kind of civilization doesn’t use Twitter? Seriously though, it’s an interesting question about how simple and decodable a message needs to be to be understood. Earlier transmissions have focused on simplicity, whereas this one will rely more on creating a complex but noticeable pattern, hopefully standing out from other random, natural noise.
After recognizing the pattern, the scientists on the other end would theoretically be challenged to find a way to decrypt the transmission and understand our language. No small feat, but surely finding a signal of intelligent origin from another planet would be a momentous and impactful find for them – assuming they don’t already know about us from past visits!
Or maybe they already follow us on Twitter.
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