What is wow signal

planetary.org

On August 15, 1977, Dr. Jerry Ehman, working at SETI, received a mysterious message on the Big Ear Radio Telescope at Ohio State University. This message communicated the new life in the hope of contacting the alien life.

Wow! Message On August 15, 1977, Dr. Jerry Ehman, working at SETI, received a mysterious message on the Big Year Radio Telescope of Ohio University. This message communicated the new life in the hope of contacting the alien life. This message was received for 72 seconds but after that, it was not received again. This mysterious message had a series of English letters and digits which were irregular and resembled a message sent by an intelligent civilization. Dr. Ehman was surprised to see the resemblance of this message to the perceived qualities of the message of the alien civilization and wrote "Wow!" On the computer's print out which became the name of this message.

image credit en.wikipedia.org

This message was received for 72 seconds but after that, it was not received again while the area was scanned several times but the signal had disappeared. This mysterious message had a series of English letters and digits which were irregular and resembled a message sent by an intelligent civilization.

Dr. Jerry Ehman was surprised to see the resemblance of this message to the supposed qualities of the message of alien civilization and he wrote "Wow!" On the margins of the computer's print out which became the name of this message. Astrophysicist Jerry Ehman circled "6EQUJ5" in red, indicating an artificial deviation in the electromagnetic spectrum.

The signal is thought to have come from the star Tau Sagittarii of the star group Chai Sagittari (Chi Sagittarii) near the Dhanu Planet, 200 light-years away. After this, despite repeated attempts to search for the source of this message, it was not received again. It is certain that this message did not originate from the Earth and came from space itself. But some scientists who saw the message 'Wow' did not agree with this conclusion. Several hypotheses were presented to explain this indication, but none could give a valid argument. This signal was received only once and till now it was considered to be the best candidate for the signal sent by any Alien civilization.

Recently, a team of researchers collaborated with the CPS (Center of Planetary Science) to wow! The mysteries of Hint have been solved. Antonio Paris, the head of the researchers, described his theories in a paper published in the Journal of the Washington Academy of Science. His report suggests that the signal came from a comet. wow! The signal frequency was recorded to be 1420 MHz which is the same as the emission frequency of ordinary hydrogen gas. A direct explanation of this came to light last year when a team of CPS researchers suggested that hydrogen clouds on comets also transmit similar signals. Wow! We could not get the signal again because comets are moving at high speed. The day the Big Year received this signal, exactly that day two comets were present in the same part of the sky. This comet 266P / Christensen and 335P / Gibbs were not discovered then.

The researchers got a chance to test their idea when both comets appeared in the sky from November 2016 to February 2017. This team did the test and in our paper said that we got the radio signal from 266P / Christensen. Matched the signal. We have combined the radio signals of the other three comets to match the signal received 40 years ago. They have received almost similar radio signal results from all comets. Researchers said they certainly cannot say that Wow! The signal was originated by Comet 266P / Christensen but they can say with relative confidence that this signal was generated by the comet itself, which is a natural phenomenon.

In 2016, the CPS (The Center for Planetary Science) reported in its research paper that the hydrogen clouds present in the comet were exactly Wow! They give the same signal as the signal. The researchers put together about 200 research data to confirm this, including radio signals received from comets, the radio spectrum, their astronomical positions, and the comets' velocity. The investigation found that the 266P / Christensen comet emitting a radio signal of 1420.25 MHz.
When this comet was present within 1 ° (60 arcminutes) of celestial coordinates, they were transmitting a frequency of 1420.00 MHz which is approximate Wow! The signal also has a frequency. This radio signal disappeared when the radio telescope was rotated to 15 ° coordinates.

Back when the 10-meter radio telescope was rotated and brought to astronomical coordinates 1 ° (60 arcminutes), the radio signal was again found to have a frequency of 1420.25 MHz. Also to determine whether other comets emit 1420 MHz radio signals. This team selected these comets P / 2013 EW90 (Tenagra), P / 2016 J1-A (PANSTARRS) and 237P / LINEAR and research found that these comets also emit radio signals of 1420 MHz. This discovery also led to the result that the comet spectra have a frequency of 1420 MHz, which can go a long way in the discovery of new comets. Thus astronomers came to know that Wow! The sign is a natural phenomenon, it is not a sign of an alien civilization.

Credit: The Center for Planetary Science (CPS)
Big Ear Radio Observatory and North American Astrophysical Observatory (NAAPO)