On August 15, 1977, the Big Ear observatory in Ohio picked up an unusually intense radio signal. The signal was so unique that it prompted astronomer Jerry Ehman to draw a red circle around it and scribble the word ‘Wow!’ to highlight his amazement. Since then, the Wow! signal , as it came to be known, has puzzled scientists who were unable to pinpoint its source.
However, a new project dedicated to solving the mystery of the signal may have had a breakthrough. Using archived data from the former Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the Arecibo Wow! (AWOW) project uncovered similar data that suggest the 47-year-old radio signal was the result of a rare event that caused a massive cloud of hydrogen to shine super brightly. A paper describing the results will soon be submitted for peer review with a scientific journal, the team’s project page states.
Abel Méndez, associate professor of physics and astrobiology at the University of Puerto Rico, who led the study, admits that he only began diving deep into the Wow! signal earlier this year. “I have to confess, the Wow! signal for me, and for many astronomers, was something like a fluke,” he told Gizmodo. “So I never really paid attention to it.
” For years, Méndez has been researching habitability across the universe by observing stars and the planets that orbit them. In May, he stumbled upon a video explaining the Wow! signal, and it got him hooked. “I thought, well that would be something amazing to find in ou.