How to Tweet to Aliens Tonight

Don't forget to contact aliens this evening.

All Twitter messages composed between 8 p.m. EDT Friday (June 29) and 3 a.m. EDT Saturday (June 30) tagged with the hashtag #ChasingUFOs will be collectively beamed up to space Aug. 15, toward a spot in the sky from which a possible alien signal originated.

The cosmic tweet is a belated reply to the Wow! signal, a mysterious radio transmission that was detected at the Big Ear radio observatory in Ohio in 1977 coming from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. At its peak, the 72-second transmission was 30 times more powerful than ambient radiation from deep space, prompting the volunteer astronomer Jerry Ehman to scrawl "Wow!" next to the data on a computer printout, giving the signal its name.

No one knows whether the seemingly unnatural blip of data really was beamed toward Earth by aliens, and despite great effort, scientists have never managed to detect a repeat transmission from the same spot in the sky. Thirty-five years on, the Wow! signal remains an anomaly.

Now, the Sagittarius aliens — if they do, in fact, exist — are finally getting humanity's response. The National Geographic Channel has organized the cosmic social media event to coincide with the premiere of its new series, "Chasing UFOs." [Roswell, Other Famous UFO Claims Get a Fresh Look]

All #ChasingUFOs tweets, as well as several 72-second video messages being created by celebrities, writers, artists, filmmakers, musicians and scientists, will be rolled into a single message for space, according to the National Geographic Channel. The message will then be encrypted with the help of astronomers at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, and beamed skyward.

"More than likely, we will be using binary phase codes," or sequences of 1s and 0s, said Kristin Montalbano, a spokeswoman for the National Geographic Channel. "The [alien] scientists, on the other end, would theoretically be challenged to find a way to decrypt the transmission and understand our language," Montalbano told Life's Little Mysteries.

Hopefully, Twitter slang won't throw them off.

So, if you have something you'd like to say to E.T., let it rip — but make sure you keep it to 140 characters or less.

Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover. Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @llmysteries. We're also on Facebook & Google+.

Copyright 2012 Lifes Little Mysteries, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Donations help reactivate SETI's search for aliens (AP)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – An array of 42 radio telescopes seeking signs of intelligent life in the universe will continue that work after private donors raised enough money to keep them going.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, Institute received more than $200,000, including donations from actress Jodie Foster, to keep operating, The San Jose Mercury News reported (http://bit.ly/pM9vHo).

The array was originally a joint project between the SETI Institute and the UC Berkeley Astronomy Laboratory, which pulled out earlier this year because of the loss of National Science Foundation grants and state budget cuts.

Senior SETI Institute astronomer Seth Shostak said he was gratified the money could be raised during these tough economic times.

"But people still think this very fundamental question — is there somebody out there as intelligent or more so than us? — is important and worth doing," he said.

The telescopes will be turned back on in September, recalibrated and operated 24 hours a day for the rest of the year as more funds are sought.

The array costs $2.5 million a year to operate with a full staff of 10 people. As a whole, the SETI Institute has an $18 million budget and 140 employees. The funding which comes from donors, NASA and the National Science Foundation.

SETI Institute CEO Tom Pierson told supporters in a letter that his goal is to raise $5 million so that the radio dishes can be pointed at 1,235 new so-called "exoplanets" that were announced in February by NASA's Kepler mission.

The array is not only used to search for E.T.s, but is also contributing to research into black holes, pulsars and magnetic fields in the Milky Way.

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Information from: San Jose Mercury News, http://www.sjmercury.com

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Donors helping to reboot California listening post for aliens

By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES | Sat Aug 13, 2011 6:51pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California institute plans to reboot its listening post for intelligent life in space, with private donations to replace government cutbacks.

Back in April, due to a lack of funding, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute was forced to shut down its $30 million radio telescope array designed to hear potential signals from aliens -- if they exist.

But officials with the nonprofit institute in northern California's Mountain View appealed for donations. This week they said the total raised had slightly surpassed their $200,000 goal.

That was due to generosity from more than 2,400 donors, including actress Jodie Foster and Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, they said.

As a result, the institute said it expects to restart the telescope array in September and run it at least through the end of the year.

The plan is still dependent upon the center receiving an unspecified amount of funds from the U.S. Air Force to track space debris that could damage satellites.

Thomas Pierson, chief executive of the SETI Institute, said he expects the nearly finalized deal with the Air Force will, combined with the private funds, allow the group's so-called Allen Telescope Array to again listen for space chatter.

"For those who are interested in understanding whether intelligent life might be out there elsewhere in our galaxy, the Allen Telescope Array and our SETI team doing the research is the best bet," Pierson said.

The search for aliens is a scientific discipline currently underway by a small number of U.S. universities and groups in Australia, Argentina and Italy, Pierson said.

The Allen Telescope Array is the first instrument designed from the ground-up, with the goal of listening for signals from extraterrestrial life, Pierson said.

It is named after Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen, one of its chief benefactors, and consists of dozens of dish-like antennas operated as one large radio telescope.

Located in a remote area in the shadow of Lassen Peak, east of Redding, California, it began initial operations in 2007, according to the SETI Institute.

The array is part of the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, a facility of the University of California, Berkeley.

The SETI project was hit hard by recent federal government budget cuts and by cost-savings at UC Berkeley.

Pierson said the 27-year-old SETI Institute, which aside from overseeing the telescope array also researches origins of life in extreme environments and conducts public education, had received two-thirds of its funding from government sources.

Now, the institute is in a "transition phase" as it seeks more private funds and ways to control costs in order to continue operating the telescope array beyond 2011, he said.

The array costs $1.5 million a year to run. Fortunately for the institute, it has high-profile advocates.

Oscar-winner Foster, who played an alien-seeking scientist in the 1997 film "Contact," explained her support in a statement on a fund-raising website created for the array.

"The Allen Telescope Array could turn science fiction into science fact, but only if it is actively searching the skies," she said.

(Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst)

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