The WOW signal (6EOUJ567) first contact

More like the 10674821th contact..

I know, I know.. just sayin'.

[edit on 5-5-2010 by TheLaughingGod]

reply to post by DaddyBare


unless we are in that scientific circle firsthand, we won't know if it really wasn't heard again

I can't help it. sorry

Originally posted by DaddyBare
“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.

You have a point there. He said if it was intelligent beings, they would send a signal more than once.

Yes we sent a signal only once.

Is he trying to imply we're not intelligent?

No, I don't think so, he's probably just wrong. As we've demonstrated, sometimes intelligent beings DO send a signal just once.

However I still think some skepticism is justified, and we shouldn't jump to conclusions either for or against alien contact.

Can you imagine the aliens we sent our signal to just once, receive our signal, and have the same discussion thinking it might be intelligent, but if it was then it should have been detected more than just once?

No mention of quantum entanglement in communications?

Instentaneous but a 'closed' system.

A good reason for why programs like SETI are probably not worth much apart from detecting early attempts at communication.

Or maybe they have been trying to contact us all along, but we dunno where/how to look for it.

Some say/think that crop circles maybe some form of communication from ET.

Let's not forget the Gliese laser light signal that was supposedly picked up in May of 2009.

Still heard nothing more of that.

But I suppose if we all continue our merry game of pretend aliens and continue letting moderators let 11 year olds post here even though it's against the rules then I'm sure there will be huge scientific breakthroughs from our community...

-m0r

EDIT: Slight increase in spite through formatting.

[edit on 5/5/2010 by m0r1arty]

There is only one thing I want to point out to all those who asked why we didn't respond to this WOW signal...

Remember it took 200 hundred years to get here... would take another 200 years for them to receive our reply... 400 years round trip...

Now think about it, what was our own world like 400 years ago, what will it be like 400 years from now??? Do you think in another 400 years there will still be undergrads listening for signals from space? Do you think in that time there's a chance we would have abandoned radio waves in favor of something else... Something better?

Who knows maybe before they would get our message someone would have perfected something like warp drive, think of flying there to say howdy in person, beating our own radio message there...

reply to post by GobbledokTChipeater


So if this was just the intensity of the signal, did it have any information in it? And if so was it "translated"?

OT love your kitty! Looks just like mine.

Well it is possible for faster than light communication in theory.

Quantum Entanglement, there was a few experiments over the years, here is one:

Source 1:
www.nature.com...

Source 2:
www.scientificamerican.com...

there was also one last month based on quantum entanglement and how we can now 'teleport' a single atom.


Therefore surely, it would be possible to communicate at these faster than light speeds once we understand how it truely works.

reply to post by weedwhacker


The difficulties are only meaningful for two way real-time communication. A beacon would work regardless of the time delay. Enough communication to say "we are here" (from either end) is perfectly feasible. We already did it.

To expect a prompt reply may be silly, but not to send a statement type message.

While we are on the subject, has anybody seen a 4 year old thread revived by a reply? isn't that a valid case of effective communication in spite of a long time delay?

-rrr

reply to post by IntelRetard


So true, we realize this as small children.

"Why aren't we spending our money on the cool stuff instead of war?"

I can only hope that as we evolve we will grow more childlike and end the idiocy that plagues us.

OP, the WOW signal has not been forgotten, I've seen it refernced several times. Nobody can say for certain what it is but it sure is interesting to speculate.


Also I keep a little sheet of paper with the following information on it

SHGb02+14a

What was that?

As far as I know we have not gone back to look either, very odd...


[edit on 5-5-2010 by Helmkat]

reply to post by DaddyBare


Maybe the signal is sent once a month...
and someone or a group of people need to keep sending replies on that frequency often.

Screw galactic spam and who cares if we interupt a fleets communication system it would be worth it in the end

I still think there are a good number of scout ships in our system and on planets in this system.

Originally posted by IntelRetard
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.

i agree but also have a slight argument to your post also....

i agree with all that has been spent on wars over the last 200 years, we could have been to mars and back 100 times...even have people living in bases up there by now. and that the world is being directed for the benefit of a corrupt few instead of for the benefit of mankind.

however......

because of the wars that have occured over the last century or 2 we have the internet (originally a military project).

we have the jet engine.

communication technologie advanced dramatically.

medicine technology advanced dramatically

industry technology advanced dramatically mainly with technology used in factories.

sea and air travel improved

despite war taking up a lot of funds that could have been used on research or space travel or searching for ET life it churned out some pretty useful stuff.

reply to post by UniToxic


Correct me if I'm wrong, but it might be a more simple way to communicate faster than the speed of light. Say you hold a pen between two fingers, then push the pen with one finger. The other finger will receive the push instantly. Of course the brain can't register information that quick, but say you had a 50,000 km long "nanorod" set up between two stations in space. Then by oscillating the rod the stations could send information to each other instantly... Particles may also be entangled in similar way, perhaps a force connecting all particles from the point of singularity. Sadly only Jedi can sense this force >_<

On topic: I've heard alot of the wow signal in various documentaries Some have even tried to explain it as reflections from space debris.

Frost

Originally posted by DaddyBare
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

In the words of Dr. Jerry Ehman, the signal's discoverer - you are drawing vast conclusions from half vast data.

Remember that even the scientific community was originally fooled into thinking that Pulsars were alien signals, when we now know them to be naturally occuring radio frequency phenomena.

Calling the Wow Signal conclusive proof that we have had official contact with an alien race is the same as saying that you have had personal contact with God because a bird just pooped on you.

Originally posted by Frostmore
reply to post by UniToxic

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it might be a more simple way to communicate faster than the speed of light. Say you hold a pen between two fingers, then push the pen with one finger. The other finger will receive the push instantly. Of course the brain can't register information that quick, but say you had a 50,000 km long "nanorod" set up between two stations in space. Then by oscillating the rod the stations could send information to each other instantly... Particles may also be entangled in similar way, perhaps a force connecting all particles from the point of singularity. Sadly only Jedi can sense this force >_<

On topic: I've heard alot of the wow signal in various documentaries

Some have even tried to explain it as reflections from space debris.

Frost

Funny you mention that, there is a new Stargate series called Stargate: Universe, and they use these stones on a device which basically transferes the concious of 1 being on 1 end, to the other. (Therefore someone in America using said stones would be in the body of someone in Europe using the stones and vice versa).

I am a believer that in every bit of science fiction there is a little bit of truth.

But Entanglement does suggest that everything in the universe is connected, this then links you on to the path of the global conciousness theory, the matrix theory of how the world and universe is of our imagination and is actually just a fractal design repeated over and over on each level.

Sorry it wasn't 100% on topic, however, it does get interesting the more you look at things.

Perhaps they were having the same conversation we are having now.

They sent ONE message. They sent it hoping to hit something.

They sent it about a hundred years before we even had telegraph to send a message across THE OCEAN.

They sent it before they could have had any idea we are here.

Time frames are important.

If they were lucky, they had a really awesome hubble / deep space telescope and looked in this direction 200 years ago and saw a planet with water, oxygen, in the habitable zone of a young star. With a density and size that seemed to indicate gravity that isn't too oppressive.

And sent something in the thought that maybe something would get picked up.

The tight time frames are very very important. We are barely into the technological age. If another species in Saggitarius is about 200-300 years ahead of us, and had the conversation we are having now 200 years ago - they very well could have sent out an Arcebio type signal. Once. Just like we did.

Two hundred years is a difference of many magnitudes in this discussion.

Originally posted by Frostmore
reply to post by UniToxic

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it might be a more simple way to communicate faster than the speed of light. Say you hold a pen between two fingers, then push the pen with one finger. The other finger will receive the push instantly. Of course the brain can't register information that quick, but say you had a 50,000 km long "nanorod" set up between two stations in space. Then by oscillating the rod the stations could send information to each other instantly... Particles may also be entangled in similar way, perhaps a force connecting all particles from the point of singularity. Sadly only Jedi can sense this force >_<
Frost

You are wrong. In such a system the signal travels at the speed of sound (not the speed of sound through air, but the speed of sound through the material your nanorod)

I tought I would give some links about the WOW signal..

August 15, 1977: the night before Elvis Presley died, at 11:16 p.m. an Ohio radio telescope called the Big Ear recorded a single pulse of radiation that seemed to come from somewhere in the constellation of Sagittarius at the 1420 MHz hydrogen line, the vibration frequency of hydrogen, the most common molecule in the universe -exactly the signal ET-hunters had been instructed to look out for. The signal was so strong that it pushed the Big Ear's recording device off the chart.

www.dailygalaxy.com...

The Wow! signal was a strong narrowband radio signal detected by Dr. Jerry R. Ehman on August 15, 1977, while working on a SETI project at The Big Ear radio telescope of Ohio State University. The signal bore expected hallmarks of potential non-terrestrial and non-solar system origin. It lasted for a total of 72 seconds, the full duration Big Ear observed it, but has not been detected again. Much attention has been focused on it in the media when talking about SETI results.
Amazed at how closely the signal matched the expected signature of an interstellar signal in the antenna used, Ehman circled the signal on the computer printout and wrote the comment "Wow!" on its side. This comment became the name of the signal.

en.wikipedia.org...!_signal

AS ON EVERY OTHER NIGHT, while Big Ear was searching the skies for an alien signal, its observations were being recorded on a printout sheet.

A long list of letters and numbers was continuously being churned out, one long string for every one of the 50 channels scanned by the telescope.

A series of characters appeared recording an unusual transmission at the frequency of channel 2: "6EQUJ5" the list read. This startled Big Ear volunteer Jerry Ehman, a professor at Franklin University in Columbus, who was monitoring the readings that night.

He circled the code for later reference and added a single comment in the margins" "Wow!" The signal entered SETI lore as the "Wow!" signal.

The series "6EQUJ5" described the strength of the received signal over a short time-span. In the system used at the time at Big Ear, each number from 1 to 9 represented the signal level above the background noise.

www.cosmosmagazine.com...

On August 15th, 1977, such a signal was received at the Big Ear radio observatory in Ohio, though the ensuing drama was considerably more subdued. 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.

www.damninteresting.com...







Enjoy!


[edit on 5-5-2010 by jolois]

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

If I'm not mistaken, the inherent mystery surrounding the signal is that all evidence would suggest that it was indeed a manufactured signal and not something naturally occuring in nature.

If I'm not entirely mistaken, a quasar or pulsar repeats continuously, thus giving it a repetitive sound on a uniform cycle or frequency which would very much make it 'sound' like a manufactured signal (as I believe the first Quasar (CTA 102) discovered by SETI did - it's discoverer thought at first it was an alien signal as it repeated with a consistent frequency, thus making it sound inorganic). The WOW signal did not display any such repetition, and was instead intermittent, transmitting (or being picked up) only once from the stellar location where it was detected.

Furthermore, the range of frequencies used was one which was forbidden for terrestrial communications, and as such could neither have been a signal coming from earth nor a signal of terrestrial origin reflecting off of something near Earth (or at least this would be incredibly unlikely).

Furthermore, as it was assumed that any communication in vernacular languages would have been pointless (and because the 'transmission' in itself was not a message, per se), the frequency searched for was based upon some chemical or physical property of Hydrogen (I cannot for the life of me recall what this was, so if anyone out there knows, please do humor me), which as we know is the most abundant element in the Universe, that it would be the most likely frequency at which an alien civilization would transmit (as it is the one great common denominator of the known universe).

When you then take into account the strength of the signal as well, which was the highest that the observatory had ever recorded (6EQUJ5), it seems very unusual and in stark contrast to the usual background static of the universe. It is also notable that the signal strength was not constant but started off weak and then peaked (imagine a positive parabolic curve the likes of y=(x^3)) before falling back to nothing.

Very unusual indeed, and as yet, without a valid and certain explanation. Sadly.