The signal, recorded in 1977, was at first suspected to be an alien transmission.
On August 15, 1977, the Big Ear observatory in Ohio picked up an unusually intense radio signal. The signal was so unique that it prompted astronomer Jerry Ehman to draw a red circle around it and scribble the word ‘Wow!’ to highlight his amazement. Since then,, as it came to be known, has puzzled scientists who were unable to pinpoint its source. However, a new project dedicated to solving the mystery of the signal may have had a breakthrough.
For years, Méndez has been researching habitability across the universe by observing stars and the planets that orbit them. In May, he stumbled upon a video explaining the Wow! signal, and it got him hooked. “I thought, well that would be something amazing to find in our data,” Méndez said. The Wow! signal wannabes were a result of interstellar clouds of cold hydrogen in the galaxy, although they were two orders of magnitude less bright. Méndez and his team believe that, for the Wow! signal to be so bright, it may have been caused by a sudden brightening due to a transient source of radiation such as a magnetar. A magnetar is a type of neutron star with extremely strong magnetic fields, and it could excite the atoms in the hydrogen clouds to produce a sudden brightening.
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