The Wow! Signal

On August 15, 1977, Dr. Jerry R. Ehman detected a very strong, narrowband radio signal while working on a project for SETI at Ohio State University. The signal had the potential to be of non-terrestrial and non-solar system origin. It came from the Sagittarius constellation region and lasted for 72 seconds. It has never been detected again. Dr. Ehman was so amazed by this signal that he circled the frequency on the computer printout and wrote "Wow!" next to it. Hence the name "Wow! Signal".

Dr. Ehman searched unsuccessfully for a recurrence of the signal in the months following his discovery, as did others after him. In fact, the search for the signal continued through 1999 by various scientists at various observation locations to no avail.

Of course, there is a ton of speculation as to where the signal came from. There is a remote possibility that the signal could be artificial due to the "interstellar scintillation of a continuous signal", which, by the way, is waay too technical for this writer to understand. :-) I do know that it's similar to atmospheric twinkling! However, scientists have tried to recreate the Wow! Signal with no success. There is also the possibility that it could have been the one time burst of some type of light source. At one time, Dr. Ehman considered the possibility that the signal could have come from Earth, and was simply reflected off of a bit of space debris. After conducting further research, Ehman realized that this was not possible. He finally concluded that he could not come to a conclusion as to the source of the Wow! Signal.