The WOW signal (6EOUJ567) first contact

I get pertty tired of folks here of all places, claiming we've never had offical contact with an ailen race, no SETI results... but we have

On August 15th, 1977, such a signal was received at the Big Ear radio observatory in Ohio...

The volunteer who spotted the pattern on the paper logs circled the data and wrote “Wow!” in the margin. The radio telescope was observing space as part of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program, and it was the most compelling signal the receiver had recorded in its fourteen years of operation. It was powerful enough to push the Big Ear’s monitoring device off the charts.
receved was a series of 6 letters and 6 numbers
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/6906d7325714.gif[/atsimg]

The signal came from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, and lasted seventy-two seconds at about 1420.456 MHz before it faded away. The volunteer who found and circled the data in the paper printout was Jerry Ehman.

Seventy-two seconds also happened to be the exact length of time it would take for the Earth to rotate the Big Ear through a signal from space.

The signal’s original discoverer Jerry Ehman doesn’t care to speculate on its source, and he remains scientifically skeptical. “Even if it were intelligent beings sending a signal,” he said in an interview, “they’d do it far more than once. We should have seen it again when we looked for it 50 times.”

Perhaps. But consider that when humankind used the Arecibo radio telescope to send a message out into space in 1974, it was only sent once.


[edit on 4-5-2010 by DaddyBare]

What if another galaxy is just another version of us doing the same thing! would be cool though huh? if we could travel to a distant galaxy and see another version of us doing completely different stuff.

Yeah I saw a post on DGalaxy about this like a month ago..
It's a really interesting storry indeed!

My son and I were watching that new show
Into the universe with stephen hawkings... the ep about aliens...
that show had a blip about this story... and I remember way back then we were all saying "First Contact!"

Odd how this WOW signal has completely faded from history dont ya think

reply to post by onequestion


I always think about another civilization doing exactly what we're doing. And maybe their not anymore advance than we are. The problem I have with SETI though is that their looking for the same type of signals we put out, and a advance civilization is more likely to be using some completely different. I think it was Michu Kaku that talked about that, when he was discussing Type 1 through 3 civilizations.

reply to post by MKultraVideos


there lies the problem... we can only use the tech we have...
who knows someday someone might invent a new communications device and we find the universe alive with chatter???
until then we do what we can...

Weird, they say they are trying to contact other civilizations but they only sent it once? I sometimes think advancements are hampered because of less than honorable agendas. It kind of reminds me of how they wouldn`t want a prisoner to be able to send a message to the outside world. Like they don`t want anyone to notice that there is a whole bunch of people here who are being harrassed and held against our will and tricked and every other thing you could think of. Or maybe they don`t try harder because it`s all a show to keep us thinking that we still haven`t contacted anyone yet.


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

it may have just as well been a pulsar or a quasar they also give off signals. but then who knows.

reply to post by conspiracydude


the only working theory for a natural cause of the original event: “interstellar scintillation.” It was thought that perhaps some weaker radio signal from space had been temporarily focused on the Big Ear in a way similar to stars twinkling… yet testing done at the VLA which is sensitive enough that it would have detected such a source, did not...

that's takes us back to it being from an intelligent source...

Edit to add:
I'm going to bed now but I'll peek in after I've had my required half gallon of morning coffee

[edit on 4-5-2010 by DaddyBare]

as michio kaku or something like that said

if there are aliens intelligent enough, they would communicate thought all frequencies

and another thing

these signals travel to the speed of light ... so, they are old ... alien species may not have survived that much or they are just appearing at the same time as us

its hard ... I think we shouldnt study or invest a lot of money in these studies

we need to focus in planets on our own system, they may have the answer

or search our own skies, simply because if there are a intelligent species, they probably made some AI to send to search the universe for life ... greys anyone?

Hopefully lazer communication will start to develop more with the future of space exploration, and give use a better chance at finding a signal, that can't be from anything but a intelligent civilization.

The finder of the signal is a stupid hippie. ''We should have heard it again by now.''Well perhaps the signal was being forced to us by an advanced race who is able to see our planet but cant tell if its inhabited or not, so the focus a radio beam at us and as we pass through the signal we catch it, but we don't respond back. so they figure we are just a bog rock. OR they are sending out a signal in a straight line and as their planet rotated and the milky way moved we have lost the angle to receive the signal. Perhaps we should have sent a message back to their general direction and see if we get a response? Perhaps sending it more then once?

reply to post by anubis 9311


Okay one last reply then I'm off to bed...
the signal source was 200 light years away... if we had sent a signal back it would take 200 years to get there and by then they might have forgeten they ever sent one out and aren't listening for said reply

Why would they send a signal back to us again if nothing responded? The Universe is who know how big why would they waste their time sending a signal in the same direction if nothing responded back.

The other part to this is what if other life forms are communicating with each other but we just haven't gained the technology to communicate back with them or pick up their signals?

Why would they even want to mess with us if we can't even pick up the phone call them so to speak? I'd imagine that an advanced race of intelligent life wouldn't even waste their time trying to communicate and build relations with us if we can't even communicate long distance with them.

That isn't to say that we aren't being visited, but that also doesn't mean they aren't just watching us and observing us to see how we progress and develop. I know if I was part of an advanced race and found a planet that had what we would call primitive life I wouldn't make contact I would just sit back and observe to find out where we come from, or if they needed to be eradicated for the preservation of the Universe.

6EOUJ567

Has been talked about for years and it's nice to wonder if it was just a fleeting glimpse at what is out there. As a poster stated earlier it could simply be that we will never line up to get a signal from a civilization that dies off millions of years ago.

I think it is common sense to know that we are being directed 2 steps back one step forward most of the time. 99.99999999 of the people on this planet just want to live, love, and have a good life. With all that is spent on wars and the tech that enables them we could have been to many other planets by now. In other words it's common sense to know that common sense is not being used for whats in the best interest of us all. The world is being directed in the benefit of a few who could care less about 6EOUJ567.

Shame it didn't get more media attention.


Didn't they respond to that message sent into space with a message written in crops ??? Using binary code.

at first it would seem easy to dismiss, however there are aspects of the message which reveal it to be true, when the message came back, Silicone had been added to the list of primary elements. Which I believe was fairly unknown to science at the time.

alienresearch.wikia.com...

This is a pretty interesting topic indeed. There is a heck of a lot of collected information on this signal from over the years actually, it really didn't just fade away into the mist.

A great collection of info can be found here.

Another pretty interesting signal that has kinda faded from attention is the 1967 Jocelyn Bell Burnell signal here.

It is still very debatable if these even are E.T. signals. Most things that spike our listeners nowadays are easily identifiable as a satellite or pulsar, but who knows...

**Edit.....

And oh yes, its is the 6EQUJ5 signal.

[edit on 4-5-2010 by CalibratedZeus]

reply to post by DaddyBare


WHY, oh WHY does no one seem to comprehend the disadvantages imposed by the speed of light?

Take the OP, for instance.

A "signal" recieved, by radio telescope, here on Earth, in 1977.

DOES anyone see where I am headig, with this???


Let's try again...say, for instance WE KNEW OF an actual alien civilization that exists on a planet orbitng a star that is, oh....TWENTY light years away....let's call it "Epsilon Eridani" (Just tossing out names, and distances, for effect...) (I 'think', can look it up, that Eridani is a bit closer than 20 LY....AND has been suggested to be the possible system where Vulcans evolved, but I digress...)

Back to my scenario....WE are in communication with a civilization that exists twenty light-years away. Plausible, but....don't people understand how these sorts of "communications" would happen?

TWENTY years, at light speed (for radio, or any form of EM radiation) to progress....EACH WAY!

Come on, and think about this....turn off the TV, and ponder....then contemplate the difficulites.....please.

reply to post by weedwhacker



So anything less than two-way communication isn't worth the effort? That may not have been your point, it's been a long day and I'm tired...

If it is, I wholeheartedly disagree. It took almost a decade for Magellan's fleet to reach the west Indies and venture back to Spain - 10 years, in an era when the life expectancy was roughly half of what it is now - and Magellan didn't even return being killed in the Phillipines. That stopped no one... shorter routes were found, technology improved in scope and depth. Thus it will be with interstellar communication.

It will become faster, more efficient and eventually we may well have something akin to a two way cell covo with extraterrestrials - yet there are those who would stop the work being done because we can't do it now? The one and only trait I hold dear in humanity is its neverending quest for what's over the next hill... and this my friends is it.

Originally posted by DaddyBare
receved was a series of 6 letters and 6 numbers
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/6906d7325714.gif[/atsimg]
[edit on 4-5-2010 by DaddyBare]

Actually, the numbers and letters correspond to an intensity scale. The letters and numbers are not the actual data received.