February 26, 2012   29 notes   
The Wow! Signal
Late one night in the summer of 1977, a large radio telescope outside Delaware, Ohio intercepted a radio signal that seemed for a brief time like it might change the course of human history. The telescope was searching the sky on behalf of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and the signal, though it lasted only seventy-two seconds, fit the profile of a message beamed from another world. 
Despite its potential import, several days went by before Jerry Ehman, a project scientist for SETI, noticed the data. He was flipping through the computer printouts generated by the telescope when he noticed a string of letters within a long sequence of low numbers—-ones, twos, threes and fours. The low numbers represent background noise, the low hum of an ordinary signal. 
As the telescope swept across the sky, it momentarily landed on something quite extraordinary, causing the signal to surge and the computer to shift from numbers to letters and then keep climbing all the way up to “U,” which represented a signal thirty times higher than the background noise level. Seeing the consecutive letters, the mark of something strange or even alien, Ehman circled them in red ink and wrote “Wow!” thus christening the most famous and tantalizing signal of SETI’s short history: The “Wow!” signal.

The Wow! Signal

Late one night in the summer of 1977, a large radio telescope outside Delaware, Ohio intercepted a radio signal that seemed for a brief time like it might change the course of human history. The telescope was searching the sky on behalf of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and the signal, though it lasted only seventy-two seconds, fit the profile of a message beamed from another world.

Despite its potential import, several days went by before Jerry Ehman, a project scientist for SETI, noticed the data. He was flipping through the computer printouts generated by the telescope when he noticed a string of letters within a long sequence of low numbers—-ones, twos, threes and fours. The low numbers represent background noise, the low hum of an ordinary signal.

As the telescope swept across the sky, it momentarily landed on something quite extraordinary, causing the signal to surge and the computer to shift from numbers to letters and then keep climbing all the way up to “U,” which represented a signal thirty times higher than the background noise level. Seeing the consecutive letters, the mark of something strange or even alien, Ehman circled them in red ink and wrote “Wow!” thus christening the most famous and tantalizing signal of SETI’s short history: The “Wow!” signal.

  1. evidenceandsuch reblogged this from theoverworld
  2. melolanie reblogged this from theoverworld
  3. paranormalexpresso reblogged this from lurkinunderyourbed
  4. lurkinunderyourbed reblogged this from theoverworld
  5. blondesandblunts reblogged this from theoverworld
  6. alexzjaerail reblogged this from kitten-commander
  7. emeryderp reblogged this from kitten-commander
  8. kitten-commander reblogged this from realparanormal
  9. realparanormal reblogged this from theoverworld
  10. livejustforfun reblogged this from theoverworld
  11. catgirlxlrg reblogged this from theoverworld
  12. epilepticbliss reblogged this from theoverworld
  13. ryleegordon reblogged this from theoverworld
  14. electricc-rose reblogged this from theoverworld
  15. theoverworld posted this