The project directed by the National Geographic Channel and Arecibo Observatory is sending a response to the " Wow signal" some 35 years after the event.

ENGADGET: Alt-week 8.18.12: Graphene sponges, zero-g athletics and tweets in space

Staff tell an apocryphal-sounding anecdote from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, when a promising signal turned out be a technician warming his lunch at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

BBC: Aye to the telescope

On Nov. 16, 1974, astronomer Frank Drake dedicated a new observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, by sending humankind's first deliberate communication to extraterrestrials.

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