Amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero finds possible source of Wow! signal

https://phys.org ^ | November 24, 2020 | by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

[Red Badger]

XO Planet Ping!....................

[DoodleBob]

Very cool. I've followed this for years.

I'm not a fan of vanity license plates, but I'd consider 6EQUJ5 to be my vanity.

[brownsfan]

Intelligent life? How refreshing, not much of that here in the blue part of Ohio.

[Wilhelm Tell]

6EQUJ5? Whatever planet that is from, they sure have weird call signs.

[KingLudd]

Probably a window pane somewhere had broken and a shade pull cord had wrapped around a partially empty Coca-Cola bottle which bumped into a telegraph key when the ocean breeze blew through the window, generating the gibberish signals. ... Neville Schute

[enumerated]

I bet it is Mr. Mxyzptlk from the 5th dimension - he was always such a trickster.

[DoodleBob]

That code is a 1970s way of displaying the strength of a signal over time, effectively as a number of standard deviation from the baseline.

Clinically,

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. Therefore, every 12 seconds the result for each frequency channel was output on the printout as a single character, representing the 10-second average intensity, minus the baseline, expressed as a dimensionless multiple of the signal's standard deviation.

In the chosen alphanumeric measuring system, a space character denotes an intensity between 0 and 1, that is between baseline and one standard deviation above it. The numbers 1 to 9 denote the correspondingly numbered intensities (from 1 to 9); intensities of 10 and above are indicated by a letter: "A" corresponds 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), that is thirty standard deviations above background noise.

[Red Badger]

.....Which one is he?....................

[smartymarty]

WOW

[Daniel Ramsey]

For Gods sake don’t send a signal!
We don’t have any working battleships. ...

[magyars4]

Great! If we contact them, likely mere illegal aliens heading this way!
Probably vote democrat

[enumerated]

Haha

[dp0622]

Lol

[COBOL2Java]

For Gods sake don’t send a signal!
We don’t have any working battleships. ...

Probalby the Formics

[z3n]

6EQUJ5? Whatever planet that is from, they sure have weird call signs.

~~~

Wait, doesn’t that say Beatle Juice in leet-speak?

6=b
5=s

BEQUJS

[norwaypinesavage]

"Caballero found what appears to fit the bill—a star (2MASS 19281982-2640123) that is very nearly a mirror image of the sun—and is located in the part of the sky where the Wow! signal originated. He notes that there are other possible candidates in the area"

Somehow, I'm not impressed. There are untold billions of exoplanets we have NOT found. 2MASS 19281982-2640123 is simply one of "other possible candidates in the area" of those we HAVE seen. There are undoubtedly numerous more that we HAVEN'T seen. Simply naming one "in the area" is hardly proof that the source of the signal is intelligent life.

[norwaypinesavage]

As one who watched “On The Beach” only once, well over a half century ago as a teenager, but still occasion hums “Waltzing Matilda” while I walk, I know of what you speak. How many others here, do you think, also know?

[Robe]

One of my favorite books and movie.

[SIDENET]

I decoded it:

D-R-I-N-K Y-O-U-R O-V-A-L-T-I-N-E