While no one knows if aliens are already among us or still lurking out there in the cosmos, there’s never been a lack of humans who want contact. It’s one of our favorite fascinations, and one which the National Geographic Channel plans to tap into for the marketing of their new show, “Chasing UFOs” out June 29. Naturally, the plan will center around Twitter.

Between 8 p.m. EDT Friday, June 29 and 3 a.m. EDT Saturday, June 30, all tweets tagged with the hashtag #ChasingUFOs will be compiled into one massive message, then on August 15th, beamed out in the same direction from which we received the Wow! signal, a strong narrowband radio signal detected on August 15 1977, believed by many to be interstellar.

An elaborate, multi-media marketing plan if ever their was one.

“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. “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.
“More than likely we will be using binary phase codes,” or sequences of 1s and 0s.