The Wow! Signal, picked up by Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio telescope in August 1977, has fascinated astronomers for decades. It couldn’t be explained by known natural phenomena and appeared to originate from beyond Earth, leading to speculation about extraterrestrial civilizations.
The Wow! signal represented as “6EQUJ5”. The original printout with Ehman’s handwritten exclamation.
Abel Mendez at the University of Puerto Rico and colleagues now believe they have solved the mystery. They found similar signals near the hydrogen line, like the Wow! Signal but less intense, using data from the Arecibo Telescope. They propose that the Wow! Signal was a maser flare from a hydrogen cloud stimulated by a magnetar or soft gamma repeater.
This theory introduces a new class of false positives in searches for extraterrestrial signals. Mendez and his team are now searching for more evidence to support their hypothesis, exploring archived data and looking for the energy source that triggered the maser.
The two regions of space in the constellation Sagittarius from where the Wow! signal may have originated. The ambiguity is due to how the telescope was designed. For clarity, the widths (right ascension) of the red bands have been exaggerated.
The next step is to confirm their findings and continue the search for similar signals in the sky. This discovery may provide valuable insights into the nature of astronomical phenomena and our understanding of the universe.