In many ways it's a scientific dream come true. A fantasy even to be indulged during daydreams.

Usually it goes something like this. You're sitting at your desk

where you monitor some telescope or communications equipment. Suddenly you see something unusual,

interrupting endless hours of monotony.

It's some kind of signal, something you've never seen before,

something that can't have come from any Earth source

and isn't produced by any natural phenomenon.

It's a signal from space.

It's humanity's first interplanetary email.

Of course, that's exciting, it's amazing, it's mind-blowing,

but you know it's actually just the first step. The existence of the signal says, hey aliens are here. But what is the message that's encoded inside? What does that alien email have to say. Does it say you killed my father

prepare to die? Does it say here's our alien unified theory of everything or is

an interstellar version of a Nigerian oil scam of course we're

dying to know but how do we crack the message how do we know what the alien code is how

do we figure it out and hanging over the whole enterprise is the question

what if we can't what if we never figure out what it means and there's a

growing sense of doubt that it actually means anything.

What if it's not an alien email but some kind of weird universe electromagnetic burp?

Now this scientific fantasy has turned into a kind of scientific nightmare.

Today in the podcast we're going to be digging into the true story of a message from the skies

and what it might mean. We'll be answering the question, did Earth get a message from aliens? Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe. I'm Kelly Wiener-Smith and I think probably there are aliens out there. Daniel, how are you doing? What's your story?

Hi, I'm Daniel Weitz and I'm a particle physicist and a professor at

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