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? In 1579 Francis Drake beached the Golden Hind somewhere on the northern California coast and claimed the land for England. Nobody can say which beach. A brass plate found in 1936 was celebrated for decades, then proved a hoax. Point Reyes, or somewhere else?
What do you think about this? Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, one is engraved on copper instead of parchment, and it is a treasure map. It lists 64 hiding places holding tons of gold and silver. Not one has ever been found. Real temple gold, or an ancient legend set in metal?
What do you think about this? On August 15, 1977, an Ohio telescope caught a 72 second burst from Sagittarius, 30 times stronger than background, right on the hydrogen frequency. The astronomer circled it and wrote Wow. It never came back. Fluke, or one word of a conversation?
What do you think about this? The Shroud of Turin carries a full length image of a man that behaves like a photographic negative, which nobody noticed until it was first photographed in 1898. Carbon dating said medieval. Nobody can explain how the image formed. Artwork, or something else?
What do you think about this? In December 1900 three lighthouse keepers vanished from a rock off Scotland. Door shut, meal uneaten, clocks stopped, one oilskin still on its hook, so a man walked into a storm without it. No bodies found. Rogue wave, or something stranger on that island?
What do you think about this? In 1977 a police constable signed a statement saying she watched a chair lift and slide four feet across a room in Enfield, London, with nobody near it. The girls were later caught faking some of it. Hoax, or something real that two bored children embellished?
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