Researchers May Have Discovered Source Of Alien Broadcast Found Nearly 50 Years Ago

Researchers might have found the source of a supposed alien broadcast discovered nearly 50 years ago.

The mysterious Wow! Signal briefly blared in a radio telescope the night of Aug. 15, 1977. As for its source, it might have come from a sun-like star located 1,800 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius, reported Live Science.

Amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero said that the Wow! Signal is considered the "best SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) candidate radio signal" that they have picked up with their telescopes. According to National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), SETI is a field that has been listening for possible messages from technological beings from other planets since the middle of the 20th century.

The Wow! Signal, appearing during a SETI search at the Ohio University's Big Ear Telescope, was strong but very brief. It lasted for just one minute and 12 seconds, read a report written by discoverer, astronomer Jerry Ehman, in honor of its 30th anniversary. The astronomer scribbled "Wow!" on a page after seeing the printout of an anomalous signal. This gave the event its name.

The Big Ear telescope searched for messages at the electromagnetic frequency band of 1420.4056 megahertz. It is produced by the element hydrogen. Ehman wrote in his anniversary report that hydrogen is the "most abundant element in the universe." So he felt that there is "good logic in guessing that an intelligent civilization within our Milky Way galaxy desirous of attracting attention to itself might broadcast a strong narrowband beacon signal at or near the frequency of the neutral hydrogen line."

According to a history from the American Astronomical Society, researchers have repeatedly looked for follow-ups originating from the same place, but they have not found anything. Caballero said that the Wow! Signal most likely did not come from aliens but from some kind of a natural event. Astronomers have ruled out a few possible origins like a passing comet, still Caballero noted that in human's attempts to say hello to aliens, we have mostly produced one-time broadcasts.

One of them is the Arecibo message sent toward the globular star cluster M13 in 1974. He added that the Wow! Signal may have been something similar.