Please pay! – wow! 72 seconds of unknown signals from space

Please pay! – wow! 72 seconds of unknown signals from space

When US astronomer Jerry Ehman checked the freshly printed measurement results from the Big Ear telescope on August 15, 1977, he could hardly believe his eyes: what the Ohio State University radio telescope had received appeared to be exactly the signal from extraterrestrial intelligence to be what the lead SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project was looking for.

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Stunned, he circled the signal in red with the character code 6EQUJ5 and wrote “Wow!” next to it, which gave the Wow! signal its name. To date, however, the origin of the signal has not been clarified, even if there are now assumptions about it.

In this section, we present amazing, impressive, informative and funny figures from the fields of IT, science, art, business, politics and of course mathematics every Tuesday.

The Wow signal received on the frequency 1420.456 megahertz was received from the region around the constellation Sagittarius, south of the star systems around Chi Sagittarii. It behaved exactly as would be expected from an interstellar signal hitting a radio telescope with terrestrial rotation. It was very narrow-band at 10 kilohertz, about 30 times stronger than the background noise and was received for 72 seconds. The signal strength first rose, reached a peak in a signal strength that the researchers have never measured before, and then fell again. As a result, terrestrial sources could be largely ruled out.

Space signal met space zeitgeist

The signal seemed to arrive at the right time: George Lucas’ space saga “Star Wars” began its global triumph in cinemas on Earth in the summer of 1977 with Star Wars, and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind even hit cinemas in November in which extraterrestrials make contact with humanity. And the discovery of the face of Mars, which invited speculation about ancient life on our neighboring planet, was only a year ago.

However, it was not the big breakthrough: signals similar to the wow signal could not be received to this day, even though radio telescopes from all over the world are scanning the region. In addition, no information could be discerned from the signal itself. The discoverer later commented that there could be modulations in the signal – but the technology at the time was not able to capture it correctly.

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To this day, the wow signal is unique and its origin is unknown. In 2017, researchers at the Center of Planetary Science want to have identified two comets as a natural source: Both were said to have been in the sky section at the time and had a similar signal signature. Several scientists have criticized the theory for being unsound and the measurements for being scientifically inaccurately documented.

Excerpt from the transcript of August 15, 1977. Scientist Jerry Ehmann circles the strong signal and writes “Wow!” in amazement. Besides. The wow signal was born.

Everything has to be right for contact with aliens

How likely is it anyway that we can be contacted by extraterrestrials? That’s not that easy. Let’s assume that the most recent Drake equation, according to which there are 36 extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy, is correct. If we subtract our civilization, there would still be 35 alien peoples living in the Milky Way, which is about 120,000 light years in diameter. But that says nothing about their technological status. At least one of them has to be technologically advanced enough to send out a signal – and we have to listen at the right moment.

With a bit of bad luck, a message might have arrived thousands of years ago and today the transmitter has long since fallen silent. In view of the enormous distances, such signals would also be more like an interstellar message in a bottle, which should not diminish the sensation if at some point an intelligent message from space could be identified beyond doubt.

The 6EQUJ5 coding of the printout describes the intensity of the signal curve. The signal strength is given in scales of up to 35. It is represented from 1 to 9 in the respective numbers, from 10 to 35 in letters.

The code and its areas:
6 stands for 6.0 – 6,999
E stands for 14.0 – 14.999
Q stands for 26.0 – 26.999
U stands for 30.0 – 30.999 peak, then decreasing again
J stands for 19.0 – 19.999
5 stands for 5.0 – 5,999

The signal strength of 30 is considered to be the strongest signal ever received from the system of this type.

What about other signals? In 2020, the Parkes Radio Telescope in Parkes, Australia, as part of SETI’s Breakthrough Listen Project, picked up a mysterious, narrow-band signal on the 982 MHz frequency that appeared to be emanating from Proxima Centauri. At a distance of 4.2 light-years, the star closest to the sun became a possible haven for an intelligent civilization. That could have had enormous consequences: Compared to the Milky Way dimensions, the distance is a no brainer and even a leisurely exchange with a response time of eight and a half years would have been possible. A year later, the fascination was over: The signal most likely had an earthly origin, such as an interference signal. A defective electrical device was probably accidentally switched on at the time when the telescope was pointing to the neighboring star system.

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And the wow signal? So was it alien communication or not? In an analysis worth reading for the 20th anniversary of the wow signal, discoverer Jerry Ehmann came to the conclusion that still applies today:
“So since all possibilities of an Earth origin have either been ruled out or seem unlikely, and since the possibility of an extraterrestrial origin could not be ruled out, I have to conclude that an ETI (ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) may have sent the signal that we as Wow! open question. There is just not enough data to draw many conclusions.”
Even 46 years after the discovery of the Wow! signal, its origin remains unclear.

(beautiful)

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