Aug 18, 2022 09:17 AM
https://www.supercluster.com/editorial/o...wow-signal
EXCERPTS: . . . Nobody knows what the Wow signal was. We do know that it was not a regular astrophysical object, such as a galaxy or a pulsar.
Curious the frequency that it was detected at, 1,420 MHz, is the frequency emitted by neutral hydrogen atoms in space, but it is also the frequency that scientists hunting for alien life listen to.
Their reasoning is that aliens will supposedly know that astronomers will already be listening to that frequency in their studies of galactic hydrogen and so should easily detect their signal – or so the theory goes. Yet there was no message attached to the signal. It was just a burst of raw radio energy.
If SETI had a mythology, then the Wow signal would be its number one myth. And while it has never been forgotten by the public, the academic side of SETI has, by and large, dismissed it, quite possibly because it hasn’t been seen to repeat, and therefore cannot be verified – the golden rule of a successful SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) detection.
One man, however, believed there was more to its story, and never gave up in his pursuit of the signal. His name was Robert Gray.
[...] It’s these discrepancies in human-based explanations that led Bob Gray in his belief that the Wow signal just might have been of extraterrestrial origin. Despite his experience at the 1985 Green Bank workshop, there were some positives because that’s where Gray met Paul Horowitz, who led Harvard’s SETI program. Impressed by Gray, Horowitz made him an offer: to search for the Wow signal by graduating onto using professional radio telescopes.
[...] Neither META nor the VLA turned up any fresh evidence for the Wow signal, but their observations were useful in helping to constrain how often the signal might repeat.
[...] Terrestrial interference eventually curtailed Ellingsen and Gray’s efforts to re-detect the Wow signal, but again the observations provided important constraints for the signal’s possible repeat cycle, establishing that whatever the cycle’s period was, it was likely longer than 14 hours.
Gray continued his search over the years, most recently with the team at the SETI Institute on their 42-dish Allen Telescope Array, which further constrained the repeat cycle to longer than 40 hours. [...] Yet, after decades of searching, no further evidence for the signal had been found, and most interested parties had moved on from it.
[...] Even Bob Gray was beginning to feel downhearted despite writing a book (‘The Elusive Wow’) on the subject. In 2019, Gray told me in an email that “the mounting absence of evidence (and funding) moderates my enthusiasm.” It seemed the end was drawing near in the search for the Wow signal.
Enter David Kipping. [...] Kipping’s idea was that the Wow signal may be stochastic in nature [...] There is actually a good reason why aliens might want to be so obtuse...
[...] Robert Gray died in December 2021, aged 73. Though he never got to see the finished product, his final contribution to the search for the Wow signal was the paper he began writing with Kipping, and it may have done just enough to reignite some new interest in the Wow signal, showing that there is still a chance that there is more to it than meets the eye. Now, the stage is set for somebody else to take on the task of determining whether this mysterious blast of radio waves was humanity’s first contact with extraterrestrial life or just some rogue human activity... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: . . . Nobody knows what the Wow signal was. We do know that it was not a regular astrophysical object, such as a galaxy or a pulsar.
Curious the frequency that it was detected at, 1,420 MHz, is the frequency emitted by neutral hydrogen atoms in space, but it is also the frequency that scientists hunting for alien life listen to.
Their reasoning is that aliens will supposedly know that astronomers will already be listening to that frequency in their studies of galactic hydrogen and so should easily detect their signal – or so the theory goes. Yet there was no message attached to the signal. It was just a burst of raw radio energy.
If SETI had a mythology, then the Wow signal would be its number one myth. And while it has never been forgotten by the public, the academic side of SETI has, by and large, dismissed it, quite possibly because it hasn’t been seen to repeat, and therefore cannot be verified – the golden rule of a successful SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) detection.
One man, however, believed there was more to its story, and never gave up in his pursuit of the signal. His name was Robert Gray.
[...] It’s these discrepancies in human-based explanations that led Bob Gray in his belief that the Wow signal just might have been of extraterrestrial origin. Despite his experience at the 1985 Green Bank workshop, there were some positives because that’s where Gray met Paul Horowitz, who led Harvard’s SETI program. Impressed by Gray, Horowitz made him an offer: to search for the Wow signal by graduating onto using professional radio telescopes.
[...] Neither META nor the VLA turned up any fresh evidence for the Wow signal, but their observations were useful in helping to constrain how often the signal might repeat.
[...] Terrestrial interference eventually curtailed Ellingsen and Gray’s efforts to re-detect the Wow signal, but again the observations provided important constraints for the signal’s possible repeat cycle, establishing that whatever the cycle’s period was, it was likely longer than 14 hours.
Gray continued his search over the years, most recently with the team at the SETI Institute on their 42-dish Allen Telescope Array, which further constrained the repeat cycle to longer than 40 hours. [...] Yet, after decades of searching, no further evidence for the signal had been found, and most interested parties had moved on from it.
[...] Even Bob Gray was beginning to feel downhearted despite writing a book (‘The Elusive Wow’) on the subject. In 2019, Gray told me in an email that “the mounting absence of evidence (and funding) moderates my enthusiasm.” It seemed the end was drawing near in the search for the Wow signal.
Enter David Kipping. [...] Kipping’s idea was that the Wow signal may be stochastic in nature [...] There is actually a good reason why aliens might want to be so obtuse...
[...] Robert Gray died in December 2021, aged 73. Though he never got to see the finished product, his final contribution to the search for the Wow signal was the paper he began writing with Kipping, and it may have done just enough to reignite some new interest in the Wow signal, showing that there is still a chance that there is more to it than meets the eye. Now, the stage is set for somebody else to take on the task of determining whether this mysterious blast of radio waves was humanity’s first contact with extraterrestrial life or just some rogue human activity... (MORE - missing details)
