The Wow! Signal

Every now and then I enjoy reading about a good mystery. We live in a day and age when very little is left to the imagination. Most questions in life are answered. Most problems, solved. And I think that because we are privileged to live in such a scientifically advanced time, we’ve become used to having the solutions to various problems seemingly at the tips of our fingers. Therefore, when a topic comes to the fore every now and again that we don’t understand and don’t have a solid explanation for, it can indeed be a scary, brow-raising (if not hair-raising) enterprise. I recently read about one such event that I’ll share with you right now.

Humanity has always been curious about space: what’s out there, how far it goes and the inevitable question: does life exist anywhere outside planet Earth in far-away galaxies? Over the years, there seemed little evidence of this potential extraterrestrial life. Mostly hoaxes or elaborate stories, time and again disputed and disproven. However, something wonderful and fantastic occurred that truly piqued everyone’s interest in the possibility of alien life.  In 1977, astronomers were using a radio telescope called Big Ear at Ohio State University to scan radio waves coming into Earth’s atmosphere from space. Most of what filtered in was hum-drum: expected low –frequency blips collected on the recording tape, leading to reams and reams of useless mundane information.  But on one fateful night that year, the telescope picked up 72 seconds worth of high-burst radio waves from the night sky.  Astronomer Jerry Ehman, who found and was analyzing the signal at that time, was so excited by this finding that he circled the radio wave read-out on the recording paper and wrote the word “ Wow !” on it.  This signal (thereafter referred to as ‘the Wow!’ signal) was definitely emanating from interstellar space, from Chi Sagittarii - a group of stars that are a part of the constellation Sagittarius.

The finding was especially exciting because over a decade prior to this, Cornell physicists has speculated that, if alien life truly existed and wanted to send a communication signal out into space, they might choose to utilize a frequency of 1420 megahertz. This is because this frequency is naturally emitted from the element hydrogen, the most common element in the universe and therefore familiar to all living inhabitants. The exact frequency of the Wow! signal was recorded as 1420.46 MHz.

Jerry Ehman and other astronomers worked vigorously to try and detect the signal again. They made countless attempts over the years, but to no avail. No such signal or anything similar was ever recorded again. If someone was trying to communicate with Earth, why wasn’t another attempt made? Over the years, more sophisticated and sensitive radio telescopes were employed, but no new information was found. In 2012, which marked the 35^th anniversary of the Wow! signal, a radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, was used to send over 10,000 Twitter messages to the same location in Chi Sagittarii where the signal originated.

Because no other signals have been detected since that fateful night in 1977, several theories emerged as to what, other than extraterrestrial life, could have caused such a high frequency wave.  Perhaps the signal really originated from Earth but pinged back after hitting space junk? Could the source be military in origin? Due to various physics explanations beyond the scope of this blog entry, no theory seems to fully explain the phenomenon. Therefore, the origin of the Wow! signal remains a mystery...

...until now, maybe?

In this year 2016, a former analyst with the U.S. Dept. of Defense and astrophysicist Professor Antonio Paris has proposed an interesting and exciting theory that he is prepared to test. When analyzing star charts going back to the 1970’s, two comets happened to be passing through the area of space from which the Wow! signal originated. Their names are  266P/Christensen and 335P/Gibbs and were only themselves discovered in 2006 and 2008, respectively. 

This is an important observation because comets, as it turns out, are surrounded by clouds of hydrogen gas millions of kilometers in diameter. This hydrogen gas could have been the source of the signal detected that night in 1977 by Ehman.  Professor Paris has raised enough funds to build his own radio telescope. Mapping out the comets’ paths, comet Christensen will pass through Chi Sagittarii again on 1/25/17 and Gibbs will return there on 1/7/18.  Should the telescope detect a signal similar to Wow! on either of those dates, then that proves that a comet, and not alien life, is the origin of the signal.

I personally find this extremely fascinating. It is now October 8, 2016. In a few short months, we could potentially have the answer to a 40-year-old mystery!

So what does this all have to do with my blog: Spanish language in medicine? Well, nothing really! Other than this, perhaps: the Wow! signal mystery and its investigations underscore the never-ending curiosity and endurance of the human spirit. We are always looking for answers. We don’t want to leave any stone unturned. We want to believe as the great Marie Curie once said, that “ Nothing in this life is to be feared, only to be  understood.” I have spoken many times before in this blog, about how there are days in my Spanish language learning that I feel fulfilled and unstoppable. And there are days when I get tripped-up trying to express some grammar concept, like past subjunctive or the conditional--uh, how abhorred!--concepts which at times I feel I'll never fully grasp.

But then I read stories like this one and I think, the road may be long and full of twists and turns, but anything is possible. With imagination, a desire and a drive to learn, maybe there really aren’t any such things as mysteries in this life. Maybe all the answers are already out there. They are simply waiting to be found.

References

Clark, Stuart. “Alien ‘Wow!’ Signal Could Be Explained After Almost 40 Years.” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/2016/apr/14/alien-wow-signal-could-be-explained-after-almost-40-years (Accessed October 7, 2016).

“Wow! Signal.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Web. 7 October 2016.