Alien signal Wow! could have come from the constellation Sagittarius, scientists say. This signal was picked up by radio telescopes on the night of August 15, 1977. “We consider it the best SETI candidate radio signal we have ever picked up with our telescopes,” Alberto Caballero of the SETI Institute told Live Science.
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Wow! researchers discovered during a SETI search the Big Ear Telescope at Ohio State University. It was incredibly strong and at the same time very short – it lasted only a minute and twelve seconds. The man who noticed him was astronomer Jerry Ehman. He also gave him his name – he wrote the surprised “Wow!” On the page where the signal was recorded – and he had that name left.
The answer hidden in hydrogen
At that time, the Big Ear Telescope was looking for news in the electromagnetic frequency band 1420.4056 megahertz, which produces the element hydrogen.
“Given that hydrogen is the most widespread element in the universe, it is logical to assume that an intelligent civilization in our Milky Way galaxy that would like to draw attention to itself could send a strong narrowband signal at or near the hydrogen frequency,” Ehman wrote in report.
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Since then, scientists have repeatedly searched for other signals coming from the same place. But according to the American Astronomical Society, always without success. In 2014, a study was published that concluded that the source of Wow! there is more likely a natural cause than intelligent aliens. However, astronomers have also ruled out several possible natural agents, such as a flying comet.
Nevertheless, according to Caballer, the signal is still interesting – when humanity tried to contact other civilizations, the result was in several respects Wow! signal similar – especially in that it was one-off, as was the signal of humanity to other civilizations in 1974.
Researchers have now tried to find out where it came from using modern technology that did not yet exist at the time the signal was intercepted. Big Ear telescope receivers aimed at the night Wow! captured, in a precisely descriptive direction, and were able to cover only a small part of the sky. Astronomers have been looking for possible source candidates in this regard. They used the Gaia catalog of the European Space Agency for this. And they found it.
“I discovered one particular Sun-like star there,” said Caballero, “a 2MASS 19281982-2640123 object about eighteen hundred light-years away that has a temperature, diameter, and luminosity almost identical to our Sun.” described these results in May in the International Journal of Astrobiology. It is not certain that the signal came from there, but if it were really of artificial origin, then it would be a very good opportunity for its source.
Why study it?
This signal is still interesting, humanity still has no more likely source of potential extraterrestrial civilization. It is important that it probably came from a star that resembles the Sun in its basic properties, the only star in the cosmos where life is demonstrably. Astronomers do not yet know other properties of the object 2MASS 19281982-2640123, which would indicate the possibility or, conversely, the impossibility of the existence of life.
But now they know that this is where they should target sensitive devices if they want to find out more about it.
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