Excuse me, it’s for you. Long distance….

How will Earth respond when we receive our first message from an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization? We really don’t want to mess it up. Could be important. Fortunately, a guy with probably the coolest job description on the planet gets to think about precisely this all day long. That guy is  psychologist Douglas Vakoch, and he is… yes… Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute. (I KNEW I shoulda stuck with psych in college. Damn.)  Anyway, Mr. Vakoch discusses his awesome gig over at Astrobiology Magazine, and gives us a short primer on ET-outreach efforts, including the famed Pioneer probe plaques (above)  and the  Voyager Golden Records (below). So, how about it? What DO you say when you look at the data and realize: “It’s happened! Contact!” Literally mind-boggling.