The signal came—we don’t know how—
But come it did, and we said… “Wow!”
A signal came—how? We don’t know
But maybe… it’s a UFO…

The SETI folks, in ‘77
Pointed the Big Ear up to heaven
And there, near Sagittarius,
They heard a beep, and made a fuss

It could have been a satellite—
It mightn’t have, but then it might—
Or something that we couldn’t see,
Reflected off of space debris

It might have been those Wolverines
Of Michigan, with their machines,
Just having fun, because they hate
The Buckeyes of Ohio State

It might have been the greens, or grays,
Whatever they are called these days
Some species far from planet earth—
It could be them, for what it’s worth

We’ve heard it once—and then no more,
The signal we’d been searching for;
Since then, for over thirty years,
Mere random static fills our ears

And so today, a different tack;
We’ll send E.T. a message back
So take some time; compose your tweet,
And hope they’re friendly when we meet.

On the 35th anniversary of “the Wow! signal”, a message will be sent in return.

If there’s something you’d like to say to aliens, now’s your chance. The Wow! signal, a mysterious radio transmission detected in 1977 that may or may not have come from extraterrestrials, is finally getting a response from humanity. Anyone can contribute his or her two cents — or 140 characters, to be exact — to the cosmic reply via Twitter.

All tweets composed between 8 p.m. EDT Friday (June 29) and 3 a.m. EDT Saturday (June 30) tagged with the hashtag #ChasingUFOs will be rolled into a single message, according to the National Geographic Channel, which is timing the Twitter event to coincide with the premiere of the channel’s new series, “Chasing UFOs.”

Apparently, we still do not know what the Wow! signal actually was. My money is still on a Michigan practical joke.