First Extra-Terrestrial Message Decoded—and it is Spam

Waterloo, ON, 2026-05-08—After decades of scanning the sky, scientists have finally decoded a message from aliens. And it turned out to be spam.

"We spent about 4 years on thousands of distributed computers sifting out an alien signal from the noise," said Dr. Patricia McLellan of the University of Waterloo, "and then another couple of years decoding the signal. We were thrilled! A message from an alien species was a momentous occasion!"

Dr. McLellan hoped that the first message from an alien species would reveal a hitherto unknown property of prime numbers, or else give the chemical composition of the alien life-forms themselves.

"Unfortunately," she said, "after decoding and cross checking and much verification, it turns out that the message is an offer to eliminate blordlu grencies fast. Now, we don't exactly know what 'blordlu' or 'grencies' are, but from additional context, we suspect that blordlu are hardened parts of the aliens' bodies, similar to our nails, and grencies are some kind of infectious agent, perhaps similar to fungus here on Earth."

Dr. McLellan and her team are understandably disappointed by this first message, but say they are not going to give up. "We're tweaking our decoding software to block spam, and with any luck, a real message will emerge."

When asked if her team would try to transmit a reply to the aliens, McLellan was adamant. "Certainly not! Everyone knows you should never respond to a spam!"