The Wow Signal and the Man Who Wrote It Down
In 1977 an Ohio radio telescope caught a 72-second burst so strong that astronomer Jerry Ehman circled it on a printout and scrawled 'Wow!' in the margin. This is the story of that single sheet of paper, the decades of failed attempts to hear it again, and why one unrepeatable signal still haunts the search for life.
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The seventy-two second signal duration perfectly matched the time a deep space object takes to pass the telescope.
Astronomer Jerry Ehman discovered the signal on a computer printout represented by the sequence six-E-Q-U-J-five.
The transmission occurred at fourteen hundred and twenty megahertz, a frequency known as the universal hydrogen line.
The signal was thirty times stronger than background noise but appeared in only one telescope feed horn.
Recent research suggests the signal may have been a natural radio laser caused by a magnetar flare.
Despite decades of searching with the Very Large Array, the signal has never been detected again.
- 01Intro1 min
- 02The Night at Big Ear2 min
- 03The Profile of a Ghost2 min
- 04The Decades of Silence2 min
- 05A Natural Explanation?2 min
- 06Outro1 min
- Wow! signal - Wikipedia
- The Wow Signal - SETI Institute
- Aug. 15, 1977: The Wow! Signal arrives
- Columbus Neighborhoods | The Wow! Signal: A Mystery from Deep Space
- This Month in Astronomical History
- Arecibo Wow! I: An Astrophysical Explanation for the Wow! Signal
- 35 Years Later, the 'Wow!' Signal Still Tantalizes
- Arecibo Wow!
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