The Mark Dykeman Web Niche

Mental Floss had an interesting write-up about the Arecibo Message. This message was composed in the 1970s by a group of scientists, including Carl Sagan, who wanted to come up with a message to send to extraterrestrial life forms (should they exist). The message was transmitted by the Arecibo radio telescope towards the M13 cluster, 25,000 light years away.

Chris Higgins then challenged his readers to come up with their own message. I came up with the following, which is in the blog comments:

I wouldn’t necessarily advocate sending this particular message, but on the other hand it would be interesting to see if it got an answer:

Dear Alien Beings (Who May Or May Not Actually Exist):

Hello. We’ve written this message in the attempt to reach out to other intelligent beings in this universe.

Come visit. We have lots and lots of water to share if you don’t mind some salt.

We could use help with the following:

Energy sources
Pollution
Global warming (our polar ice caps are starting to disappear; this means more water is available than we actually need)
Overcrowding in certain parts of our planet
Communication problems
Disease
War
Human nature

On second thought, maybe you should not come visit. We are not at our best these days.

If you see God, could you please tell him to come back? Or to at least answer our calls? We need some help.

On the other hand, if you are God, just trace this message back to the source and let’s talk. Of course, if you are God, you should already know the situation. So answer already!

Regards,

Earth

I think I channeled a bit of Douglas Adams there…