Extraterrestrial Life: We now know where the WOW signal came from

The WOW signal, of which you see the representation of the recordings above, was a unique radio signal, coming from space, detected on August 15, 1977 by the Big Ear radio telescope of the Ohio State University in the United States, then used to support the search for extraterrestrial intelligence . The signal appeared to come from the direction of the Sagittarius constellation and bore the expected hallmarks of extraterrestrial origin, remaining to this day the best candidate for a signal from an intelligent life form.

Astronomer Jerry R. Ehman discovered the anomaly a few days later while examining the recorded data. He was so impressed with the result that he searched the computer printout for the signal strength reading, "6EQUJ5", and wrote the comment "Wow!" next to it, which leads to the widely used name of the event. [

The entire signal sequence lasted for the entire 72-second window during which Big Ear was able to observe it, but it has not been detected since, despite several subsequent attempts by Ehman and others. Many hypotheses have been advanced about the origin of the emission, including natural and artificial sources, but none adequately explains the signal.

At the time, however, it was not possible to precisely define the origin of the signal because the basic technique of the “Big Ear” radio telescope prevented this detection. 45 years later, astronomerAlberto Caballero believes he has finally found the source of the signal.

He has isolated a star that is roughly the same size as the Sun and thinks the signal is coming from there. Caballero has taken on the huge task of sifting through the images of the galaxy collected by the European Space Agency's Gaia mission. So the astronomer narrowed down the search to two areas where the signal might come from. One of the potential sources corresponds with a star with characteristics similar to those of our Sun.

The star, classified as 2MASS 19281982-2640123, is nearly identical in size and temperature, is 1,800 light-years from Earth, and its analogy to the Sun makes it the most likely zone for an alien signal.

It is thought that a signal sent from such a great distance would take centuries to reach Earth.

Caballero said that the search for the signal is also a search for "life as we know it". The astronomer, however, does not have great illusions and believes that, in any case, the most probable origin of the signal is natural and not intelligent. No planets have yet been found orbiting the star, but we know that searching for exo-planets is not that simple, especially at these distances.

There is actually a basic problem. why would an extraterrestrial intelligent society use such a large amount of energy to send a single, almost random, signal into space. We use resources much better, for example by keeping the European bureaucracy in Brussels …

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The article Extraterrestrial life: now we know where the WOW signal came from from ScenariEconomici.it .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/vita-extraterrestre-ora-sappiamo-da-dove-proveniva-il-segnale-wow/ on Sun, 29 May 2022 13:02:21 +0000.