Possible Explanation For The 'Wow' Signal After 40 Years

[mosaix]

Alien ‘Wow!’ signal could be explained after almost 40 years

The investigator found 'two suspicious looking comets.

Known as 266P/Christensen and 335P/Gibbs, they have never been investigated before because they were only discovered in 2006 and 2008 respectively. Paris found that they were both in the vicinity of Chi Sagittarii on the day that the ‘Wow!’ signal was detected.

This could be significant because comets are surrounded by clouds of hydrogen gas that are millions of kilometres in diameter. The ‘Wow!’ signal itself was detected by Ehman at 1420MHz, which is a radio frequency that hydrogen naturally emits.'

I've always been intrigued by the 'wow' signal. In a way I hope that this isn't the explanation. On the other hand all credit to the guy for his works on this.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

In a way I hope that this isn't the explanation.

Probably is. At Interstellar distances, beyond near neighbours, it's likely you can only pick up natural signals from stars. Spectroscopic analysis works to a huge distance to see if the atmosphere might be likely indicator of life (like we have here) or industrialisation. Even a continent sized arrays of radio telescopes isn't good enough to transmit for even moderate distances (100 LY, note that the Milky way is about 150,000 LY across and on axis a bit like a discus with bobbles at the axis).
Barnard's star is a neighbour (not likely to have planets?) and is 6 LY away, 4th closest star.

List of Nearest Stars. Even some these are probably too far for artificial radio signals to be detected*. Ever since I became a communications Engineer, I was sceptical about the value of SETI using radio, the numbers don't add up.

Wikipedia image of stars up to 14 LY away

I'll be very surprised indeed if any artificial signal from space is from anything other than an Alien Probe or Starship, at a maximum of a light month or two away.

We know comets can emit radio bursts.

[*It's not a matter of better electronics, we are able already to make gear far quieter than the quietest parts of the sky. You need bigger dishes. Maybe a massive array of 1000s of dishes on far side of moon, only good when that face is shielded from the sun by the Earth. The Sun and Earth are too noisy.]

 

[Zoe Mackay]

Such signal! Much hydrogen! So alien! Wow!