If humans were to make contact with an intelligent alien species, they would be interested in one thing: our music.
David Grinspoon, the principal scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, and Ka Chun Yu, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science's curator of space science, believe that alien species wouldn't care about our technology, our literature or our precious resources. They'd want to communicate, and the most likely way to do so is through music. That's why Grinspoon and Yu formed the House Band to the Universe.
Though the question of whether aliens listen to music might sound more like it came from a stoned teenager listening to Pink Floyd than an astrophysicist, the idea of speaking to martians through music was first formally proposed in 2010, during a conference for the members of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, better known as SETI. There it was concluded that musical compositions, which are based on mathematical patterns, could be appreciated by an alien civilization — just another indication that music, above all else, is a truly universal language.