My message to aliens

I submitted this video to the National Geographic’s Wow reply project.

In 1977, SETI (the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) picked up a strange signal from space — a 72-second burst that became known as The Wow Signal. It’s remained unexplained for 35 years.

As part of the anniversary (and to coincide with NatGeo’s new documentary series “Chasing UFOs”), They’re crowdsourcing a public reply using Twitter – anyone that tweets with a hashtag on the night of June 29th will have their message beamed to space from Arecibo Observatory, the world’s largest ground-based radio telescope.

They were nice enough to ask me for a 72-second video message (the same length as the original Wow signal)that will be beamed back along with the tweets. These featured video voices have been selected to represent a cross section of the best in human art, culture and conversation – celebrities, writers, artists, filmmakers, musicians, scientists. etc. And for some reason, me.

I’ll be honest, I’m not so certain that I believe it was an alien signal, it’s more likely Interstellar scintillation of a weaker continuous signal. But we don’t have enough data to know for sure. AND how I could turn down the opportunity to have a video beamed from Arecibo?! I tell you, I couldn’t so enjoy my ramblings at aliens.