>>1147This picture is the famous “Wow! signal” printout from 1977, one of the most mysterious radio signals ever detected during the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It was recorded by the Big Ear Radio Observatory while scientists were scanning space for unusual radio transmissions. Astronomer Jerry R. Ehman noticed an unusually strong signal in the computer printout, circled it in red ink, and wrote the word “Wow!” beside it. That handwritten note is what gave the signal its famous name.
The strange sequence in the middle, “6EQUJ5,” is not a message or code from aliens. It is simply a way the computer represented the strength of the radio signal over time. The characters show the signal becoming stronger and then weaker as the telescope passed over its source in space. What made scientists so interested was that the pattern looked exactly like a real signal coming from a distant astronomical source rather than random interference.
The signal lasted for about 72 seconds and appeared near the hydrogen frequency, a radio frequency many scientists believed might be used by intelligent civilizations because hydrogen is common throughout the universe. The source seemed to come from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. Even though researchers searched for it many times afterward, the signal was never found again. Because of that, nobody has ever been able to fully explain what caused it, and it remains one of the most famous unsolved mysteries connected to SETI and the possibility of extraterrestrial life.