Stephen Colbert Responds to the Wow! Signal.

The messages are intended as a response to what’s called the Wow! signal, an intriguing radio signal detected on Aug. 15, 1977 that some thought was a call from extraterrestrials. The 72-second transmission was picked up by the Big Ear radio observatory at Ohio State University, coming from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius.

Because the radio signal was 30 times more powerful than the average radiation from deep space, a volunteer astronomer named Jerry Ehman who was watching the telescope data scrawled “Wow!” on a computer printout, leading to the signal’s moniker. No evidence ever arrived actually linking the transmission to an alien civilization, and no repeat message from the same direction has ever been detected, and the Wow! Signal remains a mystery.

Now, exactly 35 years later, whoever sent the emission may be getting a response.

A project directed by the National Geographic Channel and Arecibo Observatory beamed a package of digital information out to the heavens on Wednesday (Aug. 15) containing Twitter messages from the public, submitted via the hashtag #ChasingUFOs, as well as videos from celebrities such as Stephen Colbert, Jorge Garcia, and Leila Lopes, the 2011 Miss Universe.

Source: Space.com