In 1977, the Ohio State University\u2019s Big Ear radio telescope received an unusually strong narrowband radio signal, leading to widespread excitement about the possibility of having encountered evidence of life beyond Earth.<\/p>\n
At the time, astronomer Jerry Ehman spotted the highly unusual outburst in printed out records, annotating the major radio band fluctuation<\/a> with the word \u201cWow!\u201d in red pen, thereby giving it a memorable nickname: the \u201cWow! Signal.\u201d<\/p>\n The incident has remained a mystery for decades, never spotted again in over 48 years, leaving plenty of questions in its wake. Where did it come from, and why did it only last for 72 seconds<\/a>?<\/p>\n Now, Harvard astronomer and alien hunter Avi Loeb has a wild new theory about the signal. In a new blog post<\/a>, he suggested that interstellar object 3I\/ATLAS, which is currently cruising through our solar system<\/a>, could\u2019ve sent off the signal back in 1977 \u2014 when it was still 600 times the distance between the Earth and Sun away from us.<\/p>\n Examining the sky coordinates of the object and the Wow! Signal, Loeb concluded that the \u201cchance of two random directions in the sky being aligned to that level is about 0.6 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf the \u2018Wow! Signal\u2019 originated from 3I\/ATLAS, how powerful was the transmitter?\u201d he wrote, once again<\/a> raising the possibility that the object could be an artifact from an advanced extraterrestrial civilization<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ever since it was first observed in July, 3I\/ATLAS \u2014 only the third interstellar object ever spotted \u2014 has fascinated scientists. Loeb has previously pointed to the object\u2019s unusual chemical makeup<\/a>, its peculiar path\u00a0taking it close to the orbits of Mars and Jupiter<\/a>, and its\u00a0enormous suspected size<\/a> to suggest that it could be a piece of technology sent to us by an alien race.<\/p>\n For his latest theory about the Wow! Signal, Loeb suggested that 3I\/ATLAS would\u2019ve had to have a power source of 0.5 to 2 gigawatts to send off the Wow! Signal from 600 astronomical units away, equivalent to the \u201coutput of a typical nuclear reactor on Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a far-fetched theory that would require plenty of additional data to confirm.<\/p>\n \u201cSo far, no radio telescope reported data on 3I\/ATLAS,\u201d Loeb wrote. \u201cHere\u2019s hoping that the coincidence in the arrival direction of 3I\/ATLAS and the \u2018Wow! Signal\u2019 would motivate radio observers to check whether 3I\/ATLAS shows any radio transmission around the hyperfine line of hydrogen.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTo measure these properties, we should attempt to use all telescopes on Earth and in space,\u201d he argued.<\/p>\n This is far from the first unusual theory about the Wow! Signal to have surfaced over the decades. Most recently, researchers from the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, which was home<\/a> to the world\u2019s largest single-aperture telescope, are re-analyzing unexplained radio signals.<\/p>\n