[DoodleBob]

Wow! Is really fascinating and easy to understand if the lecturer doesn’t try to be the Smartest Guy in the Room. I’ll try- YMMV.

In short, there was a view that any extraterrestrial civilization attempting to communicate via radio signals might do so using a frequency of 1420 megahertz (21-centimeter spectral line), which is naturally emitted by hydrogen, the most common element in the universe and therefore likely familiar to all technologically advanced civilizations.

To test that view, Ohio State University assigned the now-defunct Ohio State University Radio Observatory (nicknamed "Big Ear") to the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The observatory ingested radio signals and printed out large amounts of data processed by an IBM 1130 computer and recorded on line printer paper.

This is the computer printout in question.

The signal intensity was measured as signal-to-noise ratio, with the noise (or baseline) averaged over the previous few minutes. The signal was sampled for 10 seconds and then processed by the computer, which took 2 seconds. The result for each frequency channel was output on the printout as a single alphanumeric character, representing the 10-second average intensity, minus the baseline, expressed as a dimensionless multiple of the signal's standard deviation. (Standard deviation is a statistical measure of variation.)

In this particular intensity scale, a space character denoted an intensity between 0 and 1, that is between baseline and one standard deviation above it. The numbers 1 to 9 denoted the correspondingly numbered intensities (from 1 to 9); intensities of 10 and above were indicated by a letter: "A" corresponded to intensities between 10 and 11, "B" to 11 to 12, and so on. The Wow! signal's highest measured value was "U" (an intensity between 30 and 31), which is thirty standard deviations above background noise.

Here is a different way of displaying the values.

I hope that helps.

[P.O.E.]

Looks like wow and flutter.

/(old fogey tape recorder reference mode)

[P.O.E.]

Looks like wow and flutter.

/(old fogey tape recorder reference mode)

[MarlonRando]

yeah I’m familiar with the signal it’s just that the universe is a big place, and we know next to nothing about what is out there, so unless something is blatantly obvious, I don’t know. I’m sure there is a mountain range on a planet somewhere that looks like dolly Parton

[PJ-Comix]

So that explains why Ellie Arroway has been sitting in a New Mexico Radio Telescope field for almost 30 years. She has been trying to listen to the Code 6EQUJ6 11 1 signal when all this time it was the Code 6EQUJ5 11 1 signal she should have been tuned in to.

[dangus]

I was actually familiar with Wow!, but I can still appreciate that you gave an excellent, quick summary/explanation of it.

[cgbg]

“there was a view that any extraterrestrial civilization attempting to communicate via radio signals might do so using a frequency of 1420 megahertz (21-centimeter spectral line), which is naturally emitted by hydrogen”

It sounds like witch doctors hiding behind science.

It uses wild assumptions—unsupported by any real world data—about what an ET would do.

I hope that helps.

[logi_cal869]