> The precise location in the sky where the signal apparently originated is uncertain due to the design of the Big Ear telescope, which featured two feed horns, each receiving a beam from slightly different directions, while following Earth's rotation. The Wow! signal was detected in one beam but not in the other[...]
This part intrigues me, or at least seems like an important piece of the puzzle, ruling out local causes of the signal that would affect both horns.
> In 2012, on the 35th anniversary of the Wow! signal, the Arecibo Observatory was said to have beamed a digital stream towards Hipparcos 34511, 33277, and 43587.[45] The transmission consisted of approximately 10,000 Twitter messages solicited for the purpose by the National Geographic Channel, bearing the hashtag "#ChasingUFOs" (a promotion for one of the channel's TV series).[46] The sponsor also included a series of video vignettes featuring verbal messages from various celebrities.
What an inane, embarrassing "response", if the original was any attempt to communicate. (Sounds like it probably was not, but still...)
For context (since this reply seems to be getting downvoted into faded-text status at the time I am seeing it, perhaps in part because these days people might be seeing this as a political viewpoint for...reasons):
In Carl Sagan's "Contact" the first message we get from another civilization is a rebroadcast of a Hitler rally in the run-up to the 1936 Olympic games.
In the story, as one of the early examples of broadcasted television this rally happened to be the first broadcast from us that was detected by the civilization at Vega, and they rebroadcast it back to us as part of their larger signal inviting us to come say hi.
Effectively a coincidence that it happened to be fascist in nature, but causing some amount of panic in the story from people who read into this as the aliens being pro-fascist.
I'm hoping that any aliens that may or may not exist respect my contextual integrity and don't dox my Twitter.
But to be more serious: it is absolutely embarrassing we've gone from a world where a Russian and an American sit down at the science center to talk about their work and take questions to... this.
Keep in mind WHY collaborating on space was so big -- because the same technology that can put a man on the moon can put a missile anywhere on earth.
What I will do is give you a genuine reply: I listened to a few tracks from their latest album, but when I posted this I had forgotten they had that album out.
I'd actually completely forgotten I made this post until I noticed my karma had jumped for some reason -- sometimes I don't grok why people like one link but not another, and I try to just focus on surfacing interesting stuff.
And as I said on another nym recently:
I might lack things like tact, diplomacy, and deodorant.
But I think if someone had a perfect history of me, from that pollyannyish little twelve year old on Gamefaqs to the man in the corner with his back to the wall like Matt Damon, they’d respect that when I made mistakes, I was operating with imperfect information, a limited budget, and, at times, behind enemy lines.
This summary & the abstract undersells it a bit. IIUC, a precursor/causal strong energy source like a gamma ray burst produced stimulated narrowband emission from the H clouds, effectively forming a natural maser pointed at us
Cool. I was thinking of a book with like some industrial waste accident at solar system scale but natural masters ranks up their with natural Uranium chain reaction in the crust.
it's just a CW carrier with no observable modulation for 72 seconds, the time the telescope would be expected to observe a transmission based on the movement of the earth
How do you know this? AFAIK the raw I/Q values, voltage levels aren't recorded anywhere. The printout only shows the integrated signal strength over 10s periods.
I'm referring to the recorded signal with the 10 second period. If the modulation period was greater than 10 seconds there could be observable modulation. For all we know the actual transmission was a high speed data burst showing us how to build faster than light travel.
A near-perfect sinewave is pretty much what you'd expect (and in fact will receive) at the H-line, since it represents a difference in quantum energy levels, specifically the hyperfine interaction due to flipping the electron-versus-proton spin direction. Any sort of modulation on a 1420-MHz signal would be much more interesting.
What was interesting about the Wow signal is simply how strong it was compared to the expected 1420 MHz background.
Radio astronomy is full of anecdotes like that. My favorite is the 2450 MHz emission that was found to be caused by people in the breakroom opening the microwave oven door before hitting the 'Stop' button.
Back when I was on Facebook it was often incorporated into people's art -- this was around the time Joy Division released a greatest hits album. I suspect many people went on a Wikipedia wander and came to the same inspiration after listening to "Unknown Pleasures".
I simply do not believe that the WOW signal mean anything at all.
I'm reminded of the exciting signal at Parkes Observatory that turned out to be the microwave oven making an astronomers lunch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peryton_(astronomy)
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-05/scientists-discover-s...
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/05/microwave-ov...
If all the modern sophisticated alien signal has detected zero then we really have to stop obsessing about the wow signal from 1977.
> The precise location in the sky where the signal apparently originated is uncertain due to the design of the Big Ear telescope, which featured two feed horns, each receiving a beam from slightly different directions, while following Earth's rotation. The Wow! signal was detected in one beam but not in the other[...]
This part intrigues me, or at least seems like an important piece of the puzzle, ruling out local causes of the signal that would affect both horns.
We're presuming no merry pranksters.
Isn't it possible, theoretically, to direct something at one not the other for precisely that reason, to make it SEEM far away?
> Response
> In 2012, on the 35th anniversary of the Wow! signal, the Arecibo Observatory was said to have beamed a digital stream towards Hipparcos 34511, 33277, and 43587.[45] The transmission consisted of approximately 10,000 Twitter messages solicited for the purpose by the National Geographic Channel, bearing the hashtag "#ChasingUFOs" (a promotion for one of the channel's TV series).[46] The sponsor also included a series of video vignettes featuring verbal messages from various celebrities.
What an inane, embarrassing "response", if the original was any attempt to communicate. (Sounds like it probably was not, but still...)
Who's to say that the original message was any less ridiculous?
Following tradition the message has to be video of a fascist rally.
For context (since this reply seems to be getting downvoted into faded-text status at the time I am seeing it, perhaps in part because these days people might be seeing this as a political viewpoint for...reasons):
In Carl Sagan's "Contact" the first message we get from another civilization is a rebroadcast of a Hitler rally in the run-up to the 1936 Olympic games.
In the story, as one of the early examples of broadcasted television this rally happened to be the first broadcast from us that was detected by the civilization at Vega, and they rebroadcast it back to us as part of their larger signal inviting us to come say hi.
Effectively a coincidence that it happened to be fascist in nature, but causing some amount of panic in the story from people who read into this as the aliens being pro-fascist.
"The Message From Vega":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRD-tO7jV9U
I'm hoping that any aliens that may or may not exist respect my contextual integrity and don't dox my Twitter.
But to be more serious: it is absolutely embarrassing we've gone from a world where a Russian and an American sit down at the science center to talk about their work and take questions to... this.
Keep in mind WHY collaborating on space was so big -- because the same technology that can put a man on the moon can put a missile anywhere on earth.
OP must be a Muse fan:
https://open.spotify.com/album/6TObgE5QDLYzA3Exu5vGhS
I am not clicking that link.
What I will do is give you a genuine reply: I listened to a few tracks from their latest album, but when I posted this I had forgotten they had that album out.
I'd actually completely forgotten I made this post until I noticed my karma had jumped for some reason -- sometimes I don't grok why people like one link but not another, and I try to just focus on surfacing interesting stuff.
And as I said on another nym recently:
I might lack things like tact, diplomacy, and deodorant.
But I think if someone had a perfect history of me, from that pollyannyish little twelve year old on Gamefaqs to the man in the corner with his back to the wall like Matt Damon, they’d respect that when I made mistakes, I was operating with imperfect information, a limited budget, and, at times, behind enemy lines.
Someone needs to write a book with a story of how this might have happened.
I think current theory is hydrogen clouds https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.10657
Which sounds like swamp gas in space, but what do I know.
This summary & the abstract undersells it a bit. IIUC, a precursor/causal strong energy source like a gamma ray burst produced stimulated narrowband emission from the H clouds, effectively forming a natural maser pointed at us
Cool. I was thinking of a book with like some industrial waste accident at solar system scale but natural masters ranks up their with natural Uranium chain reaction in the crust.
space farts
There is a book that talks about this, and many other things related to SETI.
https://www.amazon.com/Elusive-Wow-Searching-Extraterrestria...
Four dozen + 1 = 7^2 years ago, our fathers received a signal...
Not sure if you're sarcastic but it's the starting point of the Three body problem.
Surely ironic and the book is "Contact".
Best prank call ever.
Any other faves?
What was the WoW signal in signal processing terms? Just a strong CW burst? Any modulation?
Asked differently, if I looked at this signal in an oscilloscope, would it be a perfect sine wave at the hydrogen line frequency?
That's got to be an alien transmitting that.
it's just a CW carrier with no observable modulation for 72 seconds, the time the telescope would be expected to observe a transmission based on the movement of the earth
How do you know this? AFAIK the raw I/Q values, voltage levels aren't recorded anywhere. The printout only shows the integrated signal strength over 10s periods.
I'm referring to the recorded signal with the 10 second period. If the modulation period was greater than 10 seconds there could be observable modulation. For all we know the actual transmission was a high speed data burst showing us how to build faster than light travel.
A near-perfect sinewave is pretty much what you'd expect (and in fact will receive) at the H-line, since it represents a difference in quantum energy levels, specifically the hyperfine interaction due to flipping the electron-versus-proton spin direction. Any sort of modulation on a 1420-MHz signal would be much more interesting.
What was interesting about the Wow signal is simply how strong it was compared to the expected 1420 MHz background.
Radio astronomy is full of anecdotes like that. My favorite is the 2450 MHz emission that was found to be caused by people in the breakroom opening the microwave oven door before hitting the 'Stop' button.
Ah yes. Used that image on a book I wrote once.
Back when I was on Facebook it was often incorporated into people's art -- this was around the time Joy Division released a greatest hits album. I suspect many people went on a Wikipedia wander and came to the same inspiration after listening to "Unknown Pleasures".