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Ohio State SETI Wow Signal Revisited and Debunked

Posted by timothy on from the maybe-it's-the-oh-signal dept.

An anonymous reader writes "SETI's famous 1977 'Wow' signal has been discredited in the Astrophysical Journal, using the University of Tasmania Hobart 26 m radio telescope to search for intermittent and possibly periodic emissions at the 'Wow' locale. Of the many 'maybes' that SETI has turned up in its four-decade history, none is better known than the brief, powerful one that was discovered in August, 1977, in Columbus, Ohio. Marked by the signal's rise from zero, to '30-sigma' over background noise, and back to zero in 37 seconds, the famous Wow signal was found as part of a long-running sky survey conducted with Ohio State University's 'Big Ear' radio telescope. To quote from their article in The Astrophysical Journal, Robert Gray and Simon Ellingsen, of Australia's University of Tasmania, 'no signals resembling the Ohio State Wow were detected...' So until and unless the cosmic beep measured in Ohio is found again, the 'Wow' signal will remain a 'What' signal."

2 of 44 comments (clear)

  1. How does this debunk anything by shaka999 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So it went off the air...big deal. Maybe the little green men just left orbit....geesh.

    --
    One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
  2. Debunked? Try "Case strengthened." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    'no signals resembling the Ohio State Wow were detected...'

    If they'd found some sort of a pulsar or something to be responsible for the burst, the case would have been debunked.

    But apparently they haven't, so they've only strengthened the case that something strange happened that day.