Can a "gofundme" project find the truth of the '77 WOW! signal?

I actually laughed when I saw this.

"Really? Someone is using gofundme to find the truth of the '77 WOW! signal? LOL!!!!"

That was my initial reaction, until I actually looked into it.

The hypothesis is that the WOW! signal was two comets emitting hydrogen while transiting the star cluster M55, in the constellation Sagittarius.

Comet 266P (Christensen) will go through the neighbourhood of where the original '77 WOW! signal was on January 25th 2017.

P/2008 Y2 (Gibbs) will go through the same neighbourhood on January 7th 2018.

Both of these comets are surrounded by a hydrogen cloud. Each with a radius of several million kilometers.

The Center for Planetary Science have an opportunity to direct a radio telescope at it and these guys are going to use another radio telescope to track and analyse the spectra of the 2 comets.

I think it will be amazing if they find out the WOW! signal was infact 2 comets. We'll finally have a definitive answer.

**SNIP** Link Removed by STAFF for Recruiting

Link to the hypothesis (WARNING! It's a .pdf file)

Thats excellent!
They will have 2 chances at reproducing the signal.
Looking forward to hearing the results on this one.

a reply to: TerryDon79

If you aren't already selling it then you need to contact them so they can give you a slice, it's only fair.

I thought that the signal came from a microwave oven being used nearby. Read about it somewhere.

a reply to: TechniXcality

originally posted by: thejeremybenthem
I thought that the signal came from a microwave oven being used nearby. Read about it somewhere.

a reply to: TechniXcality

Different signal. The microwave oven was at Parkes Observatory in Oz. I remember them discussing it on the awesome Wow! Signal Podcast last year.

@ TerryDon - I like plans like this.

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a reply to: TerryDon79


I think it funny that people would believe that the "WOW" signal has been more less ignored/explained by TPTB. That can't be the case when there is so much importance on what it could be hidden in those signals. The situation is the same as with UFOs. Governments profess have no interest in those things, but that is what they want you to believe--what you MUST believe. Their problem is that they can't hide these signals so they will make every effort to explain them away.

In this case of the signal, while science may lack the direct funds to investigate that signal, intelligence services direct their limitless efforts exactly as they desire...and you won't be told. I've repeatedly mentioned on ATS over the years how when both pulsars and quasars were discovered the conventional scientists involved (perhaps on orders) thought that they were ET signals for several months until natural origins were decided upon.

A radio signal that seems to show intelligence, as in Sagan's book/movie "Contact," is every bit as important to science and government as a piece of alien hardware falling out of the sky.

Personally, I think the "wow signal" wasa license plate some cop was 'running' over his radio near the Seti receiver or repeater.

My biggest question has always been, how did they translate whatever signal to the english "6EQ UJ5"?

a reply to: Aliensun

Their problem is that they can't hide these signals so they will make every effort to explain them away.

Just one 'signal' is the subject. Unless they are hiding what they really receive. According to them there aren't 'any'.

Which begs the question, why are they listening? Space should be 'full' of signals, Earth transmissions are many light years out by now. How come some super station K-MOS isn't advertising interstellar ship insurance over the galactic airwaves?

But nothing? Nothing at all? Then why bother. We have the wrong frequency… our tech is insufficient. They should be working on decoding what we consider 'normal' background 'noise'. Maybe all the signals are on the 'dead' frequency. You have to die to hear them.

a reply to: intrptr

All it takes is one fallen UFO or one signal that contains meaning.


Either way, you are NOT going to hear the truth about the event.


It just won't happen.

a reply to: Aliensun

There are more interesting signals than the old 'Wow' one. If anything, it caught the media's attention in the 70s and has been echoed by Ufologists (to a degree) and the SETI guys even more. We've been hearing 'fast radio bursts' from deep in the galaxy for years and they are more testable and intriguing (imo) than the 'Wow!'

Scientists have heard a long, repeated sound from deep in space — and nobody is sure where it is coming from.

Astronomers found 10 millisecond-long “fast radio bursts”, the latest example of a mysterious radio wave coming from outside of our galaxy.

Scientists had previously thought that the bursts were singular events. But a new study finds that at least some of the sources send out repeated messages.

Fast radio bursts: Scientists hear ‘huge’, mysterious and repeating signal from deep in space

If you have the time listen to this show here.

Further Update: Five new FRBs were recently reported. Only one of these five (130626) has a Dispersion Measure close to a multiple of 187.5, so it could just be a fluke, but FRB 150418 was also reported, and it's DM is 776.2, which is close to 4 x 187.5.

a reply to: Kandinsky

According to the source you quoted these fast radio burst (FRB) pulses are short (10 milliseconds). They would have to be from a powerful source to spread so widely. They sound more like some form of star or other large mass or hi gravity object. Maybe internal structure of god knows what form of singular monster engine of energetic particle emitting …

but still limited by the speed of light constant. We have yet to detect their airwaves, imo. Necessarily, if they were hi tech enough, they would protect this information and the channels they broadcast on from prying eyes and ears. The same way our government protects its signals and information and even protects us from knowing all they know about the 'others' out here, even… maybe.

Gotta be, that must be why we haven't heard them yet. Surely amateur radio hobbyists would have interdicted some signals on their own by now, even arbitrarily.


Imo, our puny human efforts are like trying to detect radio signals by listening to Conch shells.

a reply to: intrptr

I gotta say, the more I learn, the more I side with the 'Great Silence' and begin to truly consider the possibility of existential isolation.

That isn't to say we're necessarily alone out here. It could be the case that time and distance means we can't 'hear' our neighbours. We could be observing populated worlds at a point in their history where technology hasn't become sufficiently noisy or noticeable.

Those FRBs are likely to be naturally sourced, the reason I posted them is because they are fascinating and they do hold out the *tiny* possibility of being artificial. Whereas the 'wow' was a transient signal (with due consideration to the OP plan), these FRBs offer a conclusion.

a reply to: Kandinsky

I gotta say, the more I learn, the more I side with the 'Great Silence' and begin to truly consider the possibility of existential isolation.

Another possibility I heard somewhere is that the boundary of the solar system prevents us from hearing the signals, much the way the earths electromagnetic field prevents penetration of the solar wind.

We could travel outside the solar system and suddenly the channels might bustle with 'traffic'. Isn't one of the voyagers close? Imagine all of a sudden we have a radio receiver out there beaming back…

"Alls well, we're here and you're not. Nyah Nyah…"

a reply to: intrptr

That'd be pretty cool. It'd be like a trial too because only the species capable of getting outside their heliosphere (I think that's the word) would get to hear.

originally posted by: intrptr

Personally, I think the "wow signal" wasa license plate some cop was 'running' over his radio near the Seti receiver or repeater.

My biggest question has always been, how did they translate whatever signal to the english "6EQ UJ5"?

The letters were used to show the strength of the signal over time. Q was the strongest part and 5 was the weakest. Nothing was "translated".

originally posted by: intrptr

Personally, I think the "wow signal" wasa license plate some cop was 'running' over his radio near the Seti receiver or repeater.

My biggest question has always been, how did they translate whatever signal to the english "6EQ UJ5"?

It's a measurement of the intensities of the signal-to-noise ratio taken at intervals. Each number or letter represents a signal intensity recorded every 12 seconds at 10 kHz (recorded for 10 seconds, plus two seconds in between for the computer to process) over the 72-second long "WOW!" signal.

Letters and numbers were used to represent the intensities to simplify each intensity as an easier-to-quicky-read single character rather than a multi-digit number, which would be a jumble of numbers when put together.

1 = an intensity between 1.0 and 1.999...
2 = an intensity between 2.0 and 2.999...

and so on until

9 = an intensity between 9.0 and 9.999...

To show intensities above 10 in a single character, they used letters

A = an intensity between 10.0 and 10.999...
B = an intensity between 11.0 and 11.999...
C = an intensity between 12.0 and 12.999...

and so on.


Therefore, the WOW! signal of 6EQUJ5 represented intensities in 12-second intervals as follows:

6 = an intensity between 6.0 and 6.999...
E = an intensity between 14.0 and 14.999...
Q = an intensity between 26.0 and 26.999...
U = an intensity between 30.0 and 30.999...
J = an intensity between 19.0 and 19.999...
5 = an intensity between 5.0 and 6.999...

The "U", by the way, at about 30 times louder than a signal from normal space is thought to be the largest signal recorded by radio telescope.

When graphed, 6EQUJ5 looks like this:
[graph source Wikipedia].

a reply to: TerryDon79

Interesting theory , it would explain why the signal wasn't repeated.

I'd like to see the experiment go ahead but am unsure a campaign to buy a radio telescope to do it is the best plan , why not just buy time on a pro set up.

Curiously the proposed system (Spider500P) is being developed though a Kickstarter campaign , not suggesting anything fishy but I find it odd they would go for an untested system.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

Thank you Soylent, I never had that explained to me before, could never see it in such simple demonstration. I really appreciate that, so you know.

Now I can see the 'signal' as a plot on a graph, more a pulse than a 'message'. A single event rising to a peak and then fading.

It's a measurement of the intensities of the signal-to-noise ratio taken at intervals.

Plotted by us.

The "U", by the way, at about 30 times louder than a signal from normal space is thought to be the largest signal recorded by radio telescope.

That explains the "wow" notation. Not because it has to do with SETI per se, but because of its strength.

My own conclusion drawn for what you just laid out is that somewhere out there there was a huge explosion, we just happened to be monitoring radio at the time. How narrow was the band it was received on? Where in the frequency spectrum? If they had been listening would it have sounded like static, like a wave when it comes up on the beach and then recedes?

Thanks again…

originally posted by: Junkheap

originally posted by: intrptr

Personally, I think the "wow signal" wasa license plate some cop was 'running' over his radio near the Seti receiver or repeater.

My biggest question has always been, how did they translate whatever signal to the english "6EQ UJ5"?

The letters were used to show the strength of the signal over time. Q was the strongest part and 5 was the weakest. Nothing was "translated".

They never made that clear in all the shows I ever watched where it was mentioned. I guess they were selling us something, then.

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: TerryDon79

Interesting theory , it would explain why the signal wasn't repeated.

exactly what I thought. I read through their paper and it intrigued me.

I'd like to see the experiment go ahead but am unsure a campaign to buy a radio telescope to do it is the best plan , why not just buy time on a pro set up.

That I'm not sure of. They'll be working in conjunction with the Center for Planetary Science so I'm guessing it's more to do with finding somewhere to find the signal AND run all relevant tests in one place.

Curiously the proposed system (Spider500P) is being developed though a Kickstarter campaign , not suggesting anything fishy but I find it odd they would go for an untested system.

I noticed that too. I can't see why the Spider500P would be preferred, but maybe there is a reason.