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

iflscience.com

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

#191

Post by floatrock »

34679 wrote: 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.

There's a story of a famous observatory that, iirc, kept on seeing really powerful intermittent signals that they couldn't quite hone in on. It seemed everytime they tried to zoom in on the source they couldn't find it again. Signal was quite elusive.

They finally traced it to people using the microwave in the break room in a very specific way. Some people liked to open the microwave door before the timer went off. The microwave stopped, of course, but there was a split second where it was still emitting while the protective cage was opened, and the energy that leaked out during those couple of ms were enough to screw with the observatory equipment.

Aliens? Nope, just some tired grad student reheating their coffee.

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

#193

Post by olddustytrail »

HumanOstrich wrote: post #189
olddustytrail wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creationism is effectively identical to the simulation hypothesis. It's odd that people here will accept the latter while immediately dismissing the former.

One requires magic and the other does not.

Magic is just another name for altering a simulation.

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

#194

Post by tsukikage »

verzali wrote: post #150
booleandilemma wrote: post #133

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.

> There is no information in it

We actually don't know that. There might or might not have been some information in it; we did not capture or retain enough to be sure either way.

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

#196

Post by tsukikage »

echelon wrote: post #102
bluGill wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We won't. while we don't know for sure if there is life there is nothing close enough to contact. The closest star is 4 light years, anything within 20 light years has been studied and has no signs of radio or other communication. Anything more than 20 light years is a 40 year message round trip - too far to establish contact in your likely lifetime. (If you are very young maybe 30 light years - but that doesn't add…

HN armchair astronomer question time. What's your favorite answer to the Fermi Paradox? Any crazy far-fetched sci-fi / pseudo-scientific ideas? I'm not really a fan of "Dark Forest". I prefer these: - We're truly rare, maybe even first. Intelligence is extremely hard. LUCA is old, civilization happened yesterday. - Fragile universe. It's easy to destroy universes by accidentally setting off vacuum collapse. This woul…

Space is huge and everything is much too far apart to make travel feasible or communication sane.

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

#197

Post by metalliqaz »

floatrock wrote: post #191
34679 wrote: 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.

There's a story of a famous observatory that, iirc, kept on seeing really powerful intermittent signals that they couldn't quite hone in on. It seemed everytime they tried to zoom in on the source they couldn't find it again. Signal was quite elusive. They finally traced it to people using the microwave in the break room in a very specific way. Some people liked to open the microwave door before the timer went off. T…

even when my microwave is closed, the interference it generates while running blocks my bluetooth headphones

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

#198

Post by floatrock »

metalliqaz wrote: post #197
floatrock wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a story of a famous observatory that, iirc, kept on seeing really powerful intermittent signals that they couldn't quite hone in on. It seemed everytime they tried to zoom in on the source they couldn't find it again. Signal was quite elusive. They finally traced it to people using the microwave in the break room in a very specific way. Some people liked to open the microwave door before the timer went off. T…

even when my microwave is closed, the interference it generates while running blocks my bluetooth headphones

Yep. Water molecules resonate at 2.4 GHz (so that's what microwaves emit), which is also the unlicensed radio spectrum that bluetooth and a lot of other consumer radio devices operate on.

Not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg here.

But the observatory had either a well-shielded microwave or break room was in an adjacent building or something (they did consider "ya know, microwaves make RF emissions, and we're running a sensitive RF measurement facility here"). It was just when the door was opened that the energy emissions exceeded the design specifications. Classic human factors always find a way around your design.

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

#199

Post by jfengel »

34679 wrote: 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.

It would have to be a very specific kind of device. The "Wow!" signal isn't broad-spectrum noise. It's one specific frequency, and it just happens to be a frequency near one we expect to be used as a signal.

Somebody could well have been walking across a field with a 1450 MHz generator. I don't know why; maybe it was a prototype of a portable microwave-oven/Walkman mashup. If so, it was leaky, and perhaps that's why it never caught on.

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

#200

Post by 34679 »

andrecarini wrote: post #172
34679 wrote: 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?

It was after watching a documentary called "WOW Signal". The receiver they built was along the edge of a field, and it's designed to pick up extremely weak variations in electrical signals/radio waves. They go into great detail about how sensitive it is. The signal itself looks like a parabola when graphed, gaining in intensity and then falling off at the same rate. Exactly what you'd expect from someone walking across the field in front of it. And if I remember correctly, the signal was more about how much it differed from what was expected, not necessarily how intense it was. My thinking is that if it can pick up on the variations in signal from a star system light-years away, it would also indicate on a Timex watch (or flashlight) a dozen meters away.
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