By Katherine Noyes 08/22/12 5:00 AM PT
WWW.TECHNEWSWORLD.COM
National Geographic and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico have sent off a reply to the Wow! Signal, a transmission picked up in 1977 at Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope. The reply contained greetings from Earthling celebrities and was directed at a handful of star systems. However, there remains much skepticism that the original Wow! Signal came from any sort of extraterrestrial life.
Just after 11 p.m. on Aug. 15, 1977, while pointing toward the constellation Sagittarius, Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope picked up a mysterious transmission that would very soon make history.
For 72 seconds, the Big Ear was able to listen to that signal, which has since come to be known as the "Wow! Signal" for the excited notation made on a printout of the data by Jerry Ehman, the astronomer who discovered it.
WWW.TECHNEWSWORLD.COM
National Geographic and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico have sent off a reply to the Wow! Signal, a transmission picked up in 1977 at Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope. The reply contained greetings from Earthling celebrities and was directed at a handful of star systems. However, there remains much skepticism that the original Wow! Signal came from any sort of extraterrestrial life.
Just after 11 p.m. on Aug. 15, 1977, while pointing toward the constellation Sagittarius, Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope picked up a mysterious transmission that would very soon make history.
For 72 seconds, the Big Ear was able to listen to that signal, which has since come to be known as the "Wow! Signal" for the excited notation made on a printout of the data by Jerry Ehman, the astronomer who discovered it.
"Several pages into the computer printout I was astonished to see the string of numbers and characters '6EQUJ5' in channel 2 of the printout," Ehman recalled in a retrospective look at the event written in 1997. "I immediately recognized this as the pattern we would expect to see from a narrowband radio source of small angular diameter in the sky."
In other words, the transmission looked a lot like a signal from outer space probably would, and it's since been the focus of considerable attention in the ongoing search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).
A Reply Is Sent
Since the arrival of the "Wow!" Signal, there's never been another discovery quite like it, despite repeated attempts to find something similar in the same stretch of sky. Until recently, there had also been no official "reply" sent to what many hoped was, in fact, a message from intelligent extraterrestrial life.
Last Wednesday, however -- the day of the 35th anniversary of the event -- National Geographic's "Chasing UFOs" series and the giant Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico sent off a reply to the Wow! Signal consisting of digitized versions of viewers' contributed tweets along with videos from celebrities including Stephen Colbert, Miss Universe and others.
Is this the beginning of our first real conversation with E.T.? Well, let's just say the odds are against it.
Thank you to Katherine Noyes
www.technewsworld.com
In other words, the transmission looked a lot like a signal from outer space probably would, and it's since been the focus of considerable attention in the ongoing search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).
A Reply Is Sent
Since the arrival of the "Wow!" Signal, there's never been another discovery quite like it, despite repeated attempts to find something similar in the same stretch of sky. Until recently, there had also been no official "reply" sent to what many hoped was, in fact, a message from intelligent extraterrestrial life.
Last Wednesday, however -- the day of the 35th anniversary of the event -- National Geographic's "Chasing UFOs" series and the giant Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico sent off a reply to the Wow! Signal consisting of digitized versions of viewers' contributed tweets along with videos from celebrities including Stephen Colbert, Miss Universe and others.
Is this the beginning of our first real conversation with E.T.? Well, let's just say the odds are against it.
Thank you to Katherine Noyes
www.technewsworld.com
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