Are Neil DeGrasse Tyson & Edward Snowden Friends?

On Tuesday, moments after joining Twitter as a verified user under @snowden, Neil deGrasse Tyson welcomed Edward Snowden to the social networking platform. "Feeling a Geek vibe. Edward @Snowden, the man behind the global mass surveillance revelations. Welcome to @twitter," Tyson wrote. Swiftly, Snowden responded with a witty comeback: "Thanks for the welcome. And now we've got water on Mars! Do you think they check passports at the border? Asking for a friend." So, have Tyson and Snowden been buddies all along?

Well, although Snowden fled the United States after leaking a trove of documents to The Guardian, specifically journalist Glenn Greenwald, he managed to meet up with Tyson in New York City just this month. How, you ask? Well, fittingly for a man whose life has been dictated by electronic communications, Snowden hooked himself up to a robot and "appeared" for the Tyson interview for an episode of Tyson's podcast, StarTalk.

Tyson has no issue with being associated with Snowden, a man many (namely, the U.S. government) have decried as a traitor. "Ed @Snowden, If you visit Mars, I'd bet any life forms there will greet you with a sip of that water — and a tourist visa," Tyson continued on Tuesday on Twitter. "And, Ed @Snowden, glad to see the long exile hasn't affected your sense of humor. Staying busy?" he added.

During their podcast chat, the two chatted about their twin interests: space and communications. Namely, whether aliens would be able to receive communications from Earth. "It could be possible there are alien messages constantly hitting our satellites, and we just don't recognize them because they're so heavily encrypted," Snowden concluded to Tyson.