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The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful

iflscience.com

171–180 of 279 posts

Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful

#171

Simple programmer here. I have a dumb question. What about the "Wow!" signal is special, or unique? What makes someone see it and think "wow"? Is there some kind of information encoded in the signal?

There is no information in it, it looks like a continuous wave of radio energy coming from space. It is on a frequency that might be a natural one for any intelligent civilization to consider broadcasting on, and it is a narrowband signal, meaning it only covers a small range of frequencies.

2 questions. Are we capable of generating something like that particularly when that happened? and was there ever an attempt to respond in some sort?

Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful

#172
post #170

I had a theory that it was someone walking across the field with an electronic device, like a flashlight. So I looked up the duration of the signal, size of the field, and average walking pace. It matched perfectly.

Would you mind expanding on your theory more?

Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful

#173

Simple programmer here. I have a dumb question. What about the "Wow!" signal is special, or unique? What makes someone see it and think "wow"? Is there some kind of information encoded in the signal?

Other than the inherent curious nature of the signal itself, its special for no other reason than it has contributed to some amazing album art.

Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn’t the A-12 but a precursor. The A-12 didn’t come about until the late 50s. The Roswell incident happened in the late 40s. There were a few experiments with supersonic jet propulsion around that time. There were also Generals who would gladly stoke the UFO flames to protect the secrecy of their anti-radar research. I know this because my family was involved.

> It wasn’t the A-12 but a precursor. The A-12 didn’t come about until the late 50s. The Roswell incident happened in the late 40s. > There were a few experiments with supersonic jet propulsion around that time. There were also Generals who would gladly stoke the UFO flames to protect the secrecy of their anti-radar research. You're right with the timeline that the initial rumors didn't start with the A-12 radar test…

Occam's razor...

It's big business now to continue to believe, humans have a natural tendency to fall into cult traps.

Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful

#175
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Maybe they have a relativistic kinetic kill system and we’re on borrowed time.

Maybe they're make-believe because there's no evidence or fossil record other than giant feathered reptiles and things that came from the sea? Dig up a T-Rex skull and see if your 2,000 B.C. brain doesn't think "Dragons!"

Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful

#176
post #68

https://archive.is/2025.08.26-184549/https://www.iflscience....

Thanks... The fact that websites are now blocking Firefox by default as an "ad-blocker" is saddening.

I followed the link with an ad-blocker enabled and saw nothing.

Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful

#178
post #170

I had a theory that it was someone walking across the field with an electronic device, like a flashlight. So I looked up the duration of the signal, size of the field, and average walking pace. It matched perfectly.

Duration of the signal, along with intensity variation, is consistent with the duration of any possible point source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal#Time_variation

Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, advanced megaprojects are only achievable through sophisticated large-scale cooperation. Aggression leads to infighting; infighting wastes resources on zero-sum conflict. >based on the current state of humanity, I'm not to optimistic. Which version of Earth culture has a better shot at building e.g. a megastructure for an interstellar beacon: Earth culture during the post-nationalist 90s moment, or Ear…

>Alternatively, advanced megaprojects are only achievable through sophisticated large-scale cooperation. Alternatively, megastructures are only achievable through massive amounts of low wage workers with terrible working conditions. Consider: Panama canal, most large railroads, Snowy hydro. As time rolls forward we appear to lose our ability to do large things, and in part that's because we are less and less acceptin…

Once I had well paid job at American company in Germany which paid nice salary. Consider Apple’s iPhone. You have it, I have it and it’s a technical mega project. When you do a teardown, there are hundreds of different components. There was dozen engineers working on the smallest part. Hundreds if not more on the processor. Thousands on manufacturing, logistics and retail. These people don’t dig dirt all day long. But trust me, design, build all the parts on time, assembly and ship the phones to stores on time is absolutely a mega project. But outsiders don’t see this. Imho that’s real large scale global project.
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