“Wow!” Signal: 1977, Radio Telescope Receives 72 Seconds

On August 15, 1977, in Ohio, USA, there was a radio telescope called "Big Ear" searching for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations. That night, it received a signal from the direction of Sagittarius, lasting 72 seconds, with an intensity more than thirty times higher than the usual background, and the frequency was exactly 1420 megahertz emitted by hydrogen atoms, the frequency most likely used for "contact" in the universe.

At that time, the data was printed on paper, rows of letters and numbers, each character representing signal strength. A few days later, an astronomer named Jerry Ehman saw this line while flipping through: 6EQUJ5, he circled it with a red pen and wrote a word next to it: Wow!

And that's how it got its name.

In the following decades, astronomers pointed their telescopes at that position countless times, but never received the exact same signal again. Some said it was a natural phenomenon, a comet's hydrogen cloud; some said it was a nearby satellite; and some said it was aliens saying hello to us. In 2017, an American claimed the signal was produced by a comet's hydrogen cloud, but other astronomers reviewed his evidence and found it unconvincing.

Ehman himself said he did not draw conclusions. He said that without a second occurrence, it was impossible to judge.

The "Big Ear" telescope was dismantled in 1998, and a golf course was built on the original site. That printout is now kept in the archives of Ohio.

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