The source of a famous alien broadcast may have been pinpointed by researchers.
Wow! is still-mysterious. The signal may have come from a sun-like star in the constellation Sagittarius.
The Wow! The best SETI candidate radio signal that we have picked up with our telescopes is the signal. According to NASA, SETI has been listening for messages from aliens since the middle of the 20th century.
The Big Ear telescope at the Ohio State University is used for SETI searches. In honor of its 30th anniversary, astronomer Jerry Ehman wrote a report about the strength and briefness of the signal.
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The event was given a name after Ehmanscribbled "WOW!" on the page. The Big Ear telescope looked for messages in the 142.4056 megahertz band, which is produced by the element hydrogen.
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Since hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, there is good logic in guessing that an intelligent civilization within our Milky Way galaxy might broadcast a strong narrowband beacon signal at or near the neutral hydrogen line.
According to a history from the American Astronomical Society, researchers have searched for follow-ups from the same place, but they have turned up empty. The Wow! The signal most likely came from some kind of natural event and not aliens, according to Caballero.
In our infrequent attempts to say hello to E.T., humans have mostly produced one-time broadcasts, such as the Arecibo message sent toward the globular star cluster M13 in 1974. The Wow! He said that signal may have been similar.
Knowing that the Big Ear telescope's two receivers were pointing in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius on the night of the Wow! The European Space Agency has a catalog of stars from the Gaia satellite.
He said that he found a sun-like star that had a temperature, diameter and luminosity similar to our own. The International Journal of Astrobiology published Caballero's findings on May 6.
While living organisms may exist in a wide variety of environments around stars quite different to our own, he chose to focus on sun-like stars because he thinks it could be.
Rebecca Charbonneau is a historian who studies SETI at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and who wasn't involved.
She wondered if looking for only sun-like stars was too limiting.
Humans only have one data point when considering what types of technology aliens may have, or how they might use that technology. The concept of SETI was first seen in the 20th century, after the militaries around the world began broadcasting messages.
The point in human history where we start putting intelligent signals in space is the same point in history where we get the idea to look for intelligent signals from space, according to Charbonneau.
It was originally published on Live Science.
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