A (18:58)
As exciting as the possibility of being contacted by alien sounds, Jerry Amen and his colleagues don't want to jump to conclusions. They need to learn more about the wow. Signal before they're willing to say what it could be. So the night after Jerry's discovery, researchers want to point the satellite in the same direction to try and pick up another transmission. The problem is that during the original broadcast, the machinery didn't quite manage to pinpoint the exact direction that the signal came from. Just like the general vicinity, Jerry and the others only know that it originated from a group of stars somewhere in the Sagittarius constellation, roughly the same neighborhood as our new friend, Three Eye Atlas. Now, there's this region of space in Sagittarius called M55, with 100,000 stars. It's also about 20,000 light years away from Earth. So it's not like we can just send a probe to check things out. As reporter Mark Anthony Biddle put it in an article, this region of space is basically the cosmic Times Square. It's so dense with locations for possible life that it would be a natural first place to start looking. So these scientists point their equipment in that direction and they set it to pick up signals on the same 1420 megahertz wavelength, and they find nothing. They try again the next night and the one after that, and they don't hear anything like the wow. Signal. In the meantime, the Big Ear researchers are talking to other astronomers and researchers and professors. I mean, their work isn't confidential or secret, so there's no reason to keep the wow. Signal to themselves. Instead, Jerry and his colleagues are asking everyone they know if they've ever seen anything like this transmission. They want to make sure that they're not overlooking any explanations or missing any potential solutions. But the problem is that they only have limited data, and you can't tell a whole lot from 72 seconds of static. So all of their colleagues tell Jerry and the others, basically, if you pick up something like this again, let me know. Otherwise, I don't know how to help you. And to be fair, a lot of these other scientists outside of Big Ear are a bit hesitant to help with the research. In 1977, when most people heard the word aliens from outer space, they thought of B movies or cheesy sci fi novels. It was hard for researchers to be taken seriously if they admitted that they were studying mysterious transmissions from other planets. In fact, Jerry has two co workers named John Kraus and Robert Dickson. They've been working at Big Ear since it was built in 1963. And they hate the fact that nobody takes their years of experience seriously. So they decided to create their own magazine called Cosmic Search. It's all about Big Ear and similar facilities and the way that scientists use grounded evidence based processes to search for life on other planets. Along the way, they publish the data about the wow. Signal, and suddenly this thing is public knowledge. And it turns out the general public is a lot more excitable than researchers. Lots of people read the Cosmic Search article and think, okay, the wow. Signal is proof that aliens exist. Or at least some people come to that conclusion. As always, there are skeptics who try to debunk the evidence almost as soon as they hear it. For example, some say that maybe the message originated on Earth. I mean, yes, international treaties make it illegal for anyone to broadcast at 1420 MHz, but somebody could be operating an unlicensed radio station. And if so, the facility could have picked up their signals. But the Big Ear researchers say that is very unlikely. Their detection equipment is pretty pointed into space, not back at Earth. Not to mention, if it was an Earth based broadcast, it probably would have been detectable for more than 72 seconds. It's not like a pirate radio station would turn off after about a minute, or like it would have moved out of range during that time because it's right on the same planet as Big Ear. Basically, none of the evidence fits with the idea of this being something from our world. Now, another theory is that maybe a satellite was passing through space and it disturbed the hydrogen atoms around it, making them emit very intense radio waves. The issue here is that artificial satellites move really fast. If one passed in front of Big Ear, its hydrogen atoms would have only been in range for a fraction of one single second. There's no way it could have released a detectable signal for over a minute. Plus, no one has ever received a message like this before. And if the wow. Signal really was created by a satellite, well, then we would have seen lots of comparable broadcasts over the years, and we haven't. So the Big Ear researchers say they don't think it's a satellite either. Other skeptics say that this must have just been a hoax. Maybe scientists at Big Ear faked the readings for attention. Except there's no actual evidence that anyone tampered with the equipment or manipulated the readings. Not to mention that Jerry, John and Robert aren't going to throw away their life's work by forging evidence. And Big Ear is a secure facility. So Nobody else could have accessed the equipment. All of that to say, the more we study the wow Signal, the clearer it becomes that this transmission cannot be explained away. I mean, nobody can prove it's from aliens. But researchers are running out of alternative theories. 40 years end up going by, and by the summer of 2017, there is still no clear consensus on where this signal came from. But that year, a Florida based astronomy professor named Antonio Paris proposes a new theory. His idea is that on the night of August 15, 1977, there were two comets racing through the sky between Earth and the Sagittarius constellation. One of those comets had a huge cloud of hydrogen around it. Now, that particular comet had a name, 266p. Christianson. And that's a mouthful. So I'm going to call it Christensen for simplicity. Now, Paris says that because Christensen is in motion and the hydrogen clump is moving with it, the atoms are emitting a lot of signals. Enough, in fact, he says, to create the wow. Signal. Big Ear only detected it for 72 seconds because that's how long Christensen and its hydrogen were in range. Afterwards, it vanished into space, and we never picked up its signal again, at least not for 40 years. But in 2017, Christensen's orbit takes it back near Earth again, and Paris has a chance to monitor it and see if it's blasting more transmissions like the wow Signal. Now, he doesn't have access to the Big Ear equipment because the facility shut down in 1997. So instead, he uses his personal gear, which isn't as big or as powerful. Still, he says he detects a signal coming off the comet. It's not as strong as the wow. Signal, but otherwise it's a pretty close match. Same frequency, same blast of meaningless signal with no embedded message, and so on. As for the discrepancies, he says there's two reasons why this signal is weaker than the first wow signal. I mean, number one, his technology is less sensitive. But he says that if he was able to scan it using tech at Big Ear, he'd get similar readings. But second, in the 40 years since the wow Signal was first detected, Christensen has shrunk. And this is pretty standard because comets are made out of a blend of rock and ice, so each time they pass near stars, the heat makes some of the ice evaporate. So of course, Christiansen is smaller than before, it's lighter, it doesn't have as many hydrogen atoms trailing after it, and naturally, the atoms won't have as strong of a vibration. Checks out right, except for a couple of things. The biggest is that Paris made a mistake in his calculations. The Big Ear telescope wasn't pointed at the Christensen comet on the night of August 15, 1977. And astronomers say that hydrogen clouds around comets likely aren't strong enough to emit radio waves like the wow. Signal. So the search for a credible explanation continues all the way to 2024, when a team of three astronomers from Puerto Rico, Colombia, and the US release a paper with a new theory. Once again, it is very complicated, very scientific, but I'm going to try to cover it in a simple way. The idea is that maybe back In August of 1977, there was a big cloud of hydrogen just drifting through space. Unlike with Paris theory, these aren't caught up in a comet's orbit. They're just, like, floating on their own, which is very normal. There's a ton of hydrogen just drifting through space. But they say perhaps at the precise moment when the Big Air facility pointed at the cloud, a nearby star released a big flare. Now, if that blast hit the cloud at exactly the right second, the hydrogen might have emitted a beam of microwave radiation, and Big Ear picked it up as an exceptionally strong signal. After 72 seconds, the flare fades, the hydrogen goes back to its usual activity, and the wow. Signal disappears. And you might be thinking, okay, it sounds like this theory requires a lot of highly specific events to happen in a very particular way, and that makes it a bit hard to accept, but you don't know the half of it. See, nobody has ever observed this specific chain of events before. So, yeah, sure, it is possible for a star to release a flare, and the flare could hit a cloud of hydrogen atoms and make them emit radiation, but no scientist has ever seen that happen. I'll also note that as of this recording, this paper is still under review at a scholarly journal. The study's authors publicly released their findings to the press in the summer of 2024, but initial comments from the scientific community are skeptical. So, in fairness, it is still possible that the wow. Signal could have come from a hydrogen cloud. It's just that we don't have any firm proof to back that theory up. If we want proof, we need more data. And the good news is that even though nobody has ever picked up another wow. Signal since the original broadcast, some researchers have detected other signals, and they're similar in small but important ways. And these transmissions might tell us more about what or who is trying to get in touch.