Yuri Milner, the Russian entrepreneur who is investing $100 Million in the Breakthrough Initiatives program, is offering a $1 million reward to anyone who can create the best message to send to extraterrestrial civilizations.
Frank Drake, the founder of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program, said the main criteria judges would be looking for are for messages that aren't written in human languages.
"Some people have foolishly composed messages in English. Big mistake," Drake said, according to Alien UFO Sightings.
Drake, who has also been involved in efforts to develop interplanetary messages, noted that the message should included important and understandable information for the beings that receive it, as the message could take thousands of years to reach its intended target.
"Don't just send a message like, 'We want to be your friends'. The ETs (extraterrestrials) will just get disappointed and mad at this," he said, NDTV reported.
The key to successful interaction with extraterrestrial life would be to consider what we have in common with them, according to Drake.
"There are many common reference points. Chemistry, for instance. Through the spectral lines of elements, which are the characteristic fingerprints they leave on the light spectrum, we can give scale - hydrogen's spectral line could be a common unit of length," he said, according to India Times.
He mentions that using Pulsars would also be a strong method of communication. Pulsars, known as the lighthouses of the universe, are rapidly spinning neutron stars that have a mechanism to beam light, similar to a lighthouse. This mechanism could be used to describe a time interval, he claims.
This "contest" is all part of the Breakthrough Initiatives program that was launched by physicist Stephen Hawking last week. The program has been described as the "biggest scientific search ever undertaken for intelligent life beyond Earth."
