What do you think about this?
On the fifteenth of August in 1977, a radio telescope in Ohio nicknamed the Big Ear was quietly scanning the sky for signs of intelligent life. A few days later, a volunteer astronomer named Jerry Ehman was going over the printouts when one column of numbers stopped him cold. For seventy two seconds, the telescope had picked up a narrow, powerful burst of radio energy from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. It was about thirty times stronger than the background hum of space. Stunned, Ehman circled the reading and wrote a single word in the margin: Wow.
What made it so tantalizing was where it sat on the dial. The signal came in almost exactly at the frequency of hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, long considered the natural channel an alien civilization might choose to broadcast on, precisely because any astronomer anywhere would be listening there.
For nearly fifty years since, astronomers have pointed telescopes back at that patch of sky again and again. The signal has never returned. Its rise and fall matched exactly what you would expect from a fixed point in the heavens sweeping through the telescope’s view, which argues against a passing satellite or an earthly glitch.
Could it be that for seventy two seconds in 1977, we caught one word of a conversation never meant for us, and have been straining to hear the rest ever since?
A one time natural fluke, or a message we will never decode? What do you think the Wow signal really was?
What do you think about this? On January 20, 1996, three young women in Varginha, Brazil, saw a four foot creature with oily skin and red eyes crouched by a wall. The army was in town that morning. A policeman said to have handled it died a month later. Cover story, or Brazil’s Roswell?
What do you think about this? In 1800 settlers at Conneaut, Ohio, opened a four acre burial ground in rows and reported skeletons over seven feet, jaws that fit over a man’s face, double rows of teeth. The graves were plowed under within a generation. Tall tale, or a people buried twice?
What do you think about this? The Iron Pillar of Delhi is six tons of forged iron from around 400 AD. It has stood outside through 1,600 years of monsoons and never rusted, thanks to a protective film from phosphorus rich iron nobody made again. Lucky recipe, or knowledge lost on purpose?
What do you think about this? North Sea trawlers pull up mammoth teeth, flint tools and a carved harpoon from 120 feet deep. Until 8,000 years ago that seabed was Doggerland, a forested land the size of Britain, drowned by rising seas and a tsunami. The lost land of every old story?
What do you think about this? In 1974 a Florida family found a polished 22 pound steel ball in burned brush. It hummed when a guitar played, rolled across rooms on its own and changed direction. Navy X rays showed objects inside, origin unknown. Valve ball, or something that landed?
What do you think about this? The Whaley House in San Diego was built in 1857 where a man was slowly hanged five years earlier. A baby and a daughter later died inside. Visitors report footsteps in empty rooms and a pressure on the throat where the gallows stood. Old house, or long memory?
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