There may not be many radio astronomy printouts that have achieved universal fame, but the one from Ohio State University’s Big Ear telescope upon which astronomer [Jerry R. Ehman] wrote “WOW!” is definitely one of them. It showed an intense one-off burst that defied attempts to find others like it, prompting those who want to believe to speculate that it might have been the product of an extraterrestrial civilization. Sadly for them the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo has provided an explanation by examining historical data from the Arecibo telescope.
The radio signal in question lay on the hydrogen line frequency at 1420 MHz, and by looking at weaker emissions from cold hydrogen clouds they suggest that the WOW! signal may have come from a very unusual stimulation of one of these clouds. A magnetar is a type of neutron star which can create an intense magnetic field, and their suggestion is that Big Ear was in the lucky position of being in the right place at the right time to see one of these through a hydrogen cloud. The field would excite the hydrogen atoms to maser-like emission of radiation, leading to the unexpected blip on that printout.
There’s a question as to whether speculation about aliens is helpful to the cause of science, but in answer to that we’d like to remind readers that we wouldn’t be talking about magnetars now without it, and that the WOW! signal was in fact part of an early SETI experiment. Better keep on searching then!
Meanwhile readers with long memories will recollect us looking at the WOW! signal before.
Peter Hogarth antecipated that, and he was right! Thank you mr. Lem!
I knew it wasn’t aliens–the rationalizations about why aliens would choose such a common and noisy natural frequency always seemed fraught and fraudulent–but it’s nice to see a feasible explanation besides “disgruntled intern puts modified unshielded microwave oven in the gantry while tipsy” or “rat chewing antenna feed has tragic evening”
If they chose then what are the chances we would be observing the right part of the sky at the right time at the right random frequency?
If you were to communicate with other civilisations, you’d pick a frequency you expect they may be listening to even though it’s noisy. Your transmissions will make a difference to the noise levels which you’d hope would be noticed.
Grr words getting eating up needlessly…
“If they chose then ” -> “If they chose (open angle bracket) insert random frequency here (close angle bracket) then”.
“what are the chances we would be observing the right part of the sky at the right time at the right random frequency?”
Actually, you probably wouldn’t care – by the time they get to a level of sophistication you care about, they can basically monitor huge swaths of spectrum simultaneously. It’s really just a question of what type of receiver you’re targeting (optical/radio/god knows what else).
“Your transmissions will make a difference to the noise levels which you’d hope would be noticed.”
Yeah, that’s not how signal detection works. You’ve got to be at a significant SNR at the receiver no matter what, because the noise isn’t a constant, it’s a distribution. You can “dig out” signals below noise via modulation, but then it’s the same “you have to know what’s happening” problem as picking a frequency.
And the “background noise” varies by tremendous orders of magnitude with frequency, so picking a quiet one is definitely a must.
What can’t you create, signal wise, with a combination of different astronomical phenomena? Between the different possible signal sources and processes that can filter and or modulate them there is not much you can’t create. Take the generation of prime numbers, Wolfram found that even a very simple automata can do this and the complex orbits in a galactic core is sufficient (if not likely) to form such an automata. This is why only a two way interaction with a signal can have any chance of proving that the source is intelligent, not unlike the Turing test’s function. SETI is a con and always was.
By that same reasoning, you also get that intelligence can form naturally – i.e. Boltzmann brains.
And honestly, you’re assuming that finding a natural phenomenon which produces complex output wouldn’t be spectacularly interesting and a boon to scientists. We’re looking for whatever there is out of the ordinary, not just little green men.
It is in the name SETI, an intrinsically fraudulent claim, specifically the I in SETI is the problem. You can’t search for the unprovable just as you can’t Turing test an AI without enough interaction turns, interactions being the key requirement. There is nothing within 100 light years of Earth that is even remotely interesting, so think about what it would take to deal with the time delay of trying to interact with an interesting signal source from a thousand light years away, effectively impossible.
s/automata/automaton (x 2)
I am not sure orbital systems display computational qualities or are turing complete. Automata are abstractions with behavior defined by rulesets, prime number harmonies are cool, but then harmonies and noise in signals is interesting as a result of nature or intelligence.
They are capable of the requisite complexity and interactions of information with itself, most people do not realise how little it takes to produce a mechanism that is Turing complete. Read “A New Kind of Science”. Orbits around event horizons can act like a delay line memory and that is the hardest part of the mechanism, the logic for rule 110 is about 32 NAND gate equivalents, not including the latches needed to hold bits on the way in and out of that logic. Nonuniversal systems, prime number sequence generators etc., require even less.
I am not saying it is probable but I insist that it is 100% possible, and that the universe is a very big and complex place so the probable part is relevant to the chance of you being near such a phenomenon more than it is about if it is possible at all.
Well. There you have it. The Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo has provided an explanation. Albeit a THEORETICAL explanation, but why let facts get in the way of a good story?
The point of the project was to search archival Arecibo data to look for similar signals. The “theoretical” portion is only “how do we explain a signal that’s about 100 times brighter” – most of the paper is actually observational showing the similarity of the observed signals to the Wow! signal. Follow-up observations with more continuous monitoring could observe an equally-powerful signal, which would be pretty conclusive at that point.
The explanation based upon reflections from a comet make more sense to me, given that the people who proposed it claim to have been able to model it and duplicate it. I guess that hasn’t been universally accepted, though, but the cold hydrogen theory is pure speculation.
“There’s a question as to whether speculation about aliens is helpful to the cause of science, but in answer to that we’d like to remind readers that we wouldn’t be talking about magnetars now without it, and that the WOW! signal was in fact part of an early SETI experiment.”
All you’ve done is changed the question to whether studying magnetars is helpful to the cause of science. What bearing do they (or other phenomena thousands of lightyears distant) have on us or our planet?
Further evidence that the universe has a Designer? Yes.
Interesting to nerds? Perhaps.
Useful science? Uhhh… ¯_(ツ)_/¯
(Armchair astronomers with nasa.gov in their bookmarks bar, coming to tell me how dumb I am in 3… 2…)
Science is not a Cause, its a method. All new discoveries are “useful science” since they lead to better understanding of the universe.
“What bearing do they have on us or our planet?” “Further evidence that the universe has a designer?” – what a narrow little mind you have. There you go, you got your desired criticism, now you can carry that chip on your shoulder a bit further down the road.
Tell that to Giorgio A. Tsoukalos!
The data around the signal was recently run through a sophisticated AI generated algorithm and then fed through high quality signal processors which then converted the digital data to analog and then sent through a sensitive amplifier. Scientists have dismissed the claim that in the static was heard “…help us Obi Wan Kenobi… you’re our only hope…..”😁
Since the signal didn’t repeat at that same place in the sky the source had to be random or natural.
@Jenny List said: “WOW! It Wasn’t Aliens After All!”
How about this instead: “WOW! Maybe it Wasn’t Aliens After All!”
You have zero hard evidence what the WOW! signal actually was, or was not.
Oh no, so The Angry Astronaut is now out of job ?
Oh wait, there’s always an Nth speculative take on Ohmuamua…
Never mind :-)