Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, myths, ancient artifacts, religion, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.
Well don’t tell Jodie Foster, but she needn’t have made that one movie where she made love to her dead alien father on an other-planet beach. That’s because the premise of that movie – Contact we think it was called – was about how the world would react if it ever received contact from another planet.
Problem is that film was made 20 years after the fact.
SETI is a wonderful organisation that does nothing all day but listen for signals emitting from the radio antennas protruding well-above the crust of other planets. In fact their name is an acronym for Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, and they take their job quite seriously.
Imagine their surprise then, when on August 15, 1977, they received something that Space.com describes like this:
Of the many “maybes” that SETI has turned up in its four-decade history, none is better known than the one that was discovered in August, 1977, in Columbus, Ohio. The famous Wow signal was found as part of a long-running sky survey conducted with Ohio State Universitys “Big Ear” radio telescope.
The Wow signals unusual nomenclature connotes both the surprise of the discovery and its sox-knocking strength (60 Janskys in a 10 KHz channel, which is more than 50 thousand times more incoming energy than the minimum signal that would register as a hit for todays Project Phoenix.)
Now we know what you’re thinking – just because the sound was picked up by an antenna sweeping outer space doesn’t mean the sound came from there. We agree with you – until we read this next bit on our ol’ pal Wikipedia:
[An expert] has stated his doubts that the signal is of intelligent extraterrestrial origin: “We should have seen it again when we looked for it 50 times. Something suggests it was an Earth-sourced signal that simply got reflected off a piece of space debris.”
He later recanted his skepticism somewhat after further research scientifically relegated an Earth-bound signal to be astronomically unlikely, due to the requirements of a space-borne reflector being bound to certain unrealistic requirements to sufficiently explain the nature of the signal. Also, the 1420 MHz signal is problematic in itself in that it is “protected spectrum” or bandwidth in which terrestrial transmitters are forbidden to transmit. In his most recent writings, [the expert] resists “drawing vast conclusions from half-vast data.”
Your sitting there still sceptical, aren’t you? Would it help any if we told you this isn’t the only time an apparently alien signal has been received? For this next bit we are going to delve back into Hecklerspray’s own memory – to a time we took an ill-fated vacation to Puerto Rico right when 2004’s Tropical Storm Jeanne was deciding to ravish the island.
A few weeks before our trip, you see, we read a news report that the Arecibo Observatory, a huge antenna located on the island, had received what appeared to be an extra-terrestrial signal as well. While on island we took the visitors tour of the site, expecting a massive display explaining their recent good fortune in intricate detail. Instead, there was nothing.
Just before leaving we asked a worker there about the signal – and they knew exactly what we were talking about. The worker told us (and we paraphrase) that there was a system in place where people all over the world could volunteer their computers to sift through data received by the great antenna. Due to the massive amount of info received and the small-ish amount of hard drive to search through it, they hadn’t realised they’d received a signal until years after the fact. What they did get though, was three bursts of signal when you only need two to verify it wasn’t a glitch.
Furthermore, the signal was coming from a place where there was no planet to make it. As we understood it, this was implying it was coming from something intelligent made as it floated through space. Maybe it was a satellite, maybe it was a spaceship.
We’d have loved to use some sort of official quote for that last bit, but we just couldn’t find one.
Anyway – for more on the Wow! signal, enjoy this next video clip. And while you do, enjoy that nice scientist’s earring towards the end there. It’s how you know he’s not afraid to think way outside the box.
Julian Mentat says
I don’t understand why we’re looking for alien life in digitised radio signals. Why don’t we just send a massive spaceship with a self-conscious captain and a hot signals officer in a miniskirt?
And lots of spare crew because you lose a couple on every planet.
David says
When I have listed to the WOW signal {and many time} it sends shivers up my spine. One reason so many people working with projects like SETI etc are reluctant to make a strong stand that the WOW signal was most likely artificial and not a natural source is because they are fear losing funding for these types of projects at least to some degree. There have been numerous other signals detected that absolutely do not have a signature of a natural source, but of artificial. They are very week signals, but they are signals for sure. You just do not hear about it much.