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Ohio State SETI Wow Signal Revisited and Debunked
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."
Exactly.
I don't see how you can call 'not finding anything similar' discredition.
Discrediting something like that would happen if they DID find something similar, and someow deduced that it DIDN'T originate from intelligent life.
But not finding something is no proof of its nonexistence. It still happened, and we still don't know what it was.
Oh, and the article says the "Wow" signal spanned 72 seconds, not 37 seconds.
I guess it's best not to even read the writeups anymore.
Fscking golfers. Big Ear was cool. The guys from the ham club used to use it for a ground plane with a short vertical during some 160 meter contests. The director at the time (Bob Dixon) is a ham radio operator, and probably the oldest geek I know.