Wow! Signal Updates: Search Using SETI Telescopes Explores Sun Like Stars

how wonderful person this is Anton and today we're going to be discussing the iconic wow signal the relatively strange radio signal detected back in 1977 that up until now still doesn't really have a very good explanation and one of the main reasons I'm going to be talking about this is because of this recent paper that was released just a few weeks ago where the scientists essentially used some of the most advanced observational techniques to once again try to find a potential secondary signal coming from the same direction based on the analysis of an amateur astronomer Albert de Caballero who not so long ago was able to publish a paper potentially finding at least one sunlight star that seems to be in the same location where the signal might have come from and so in this video we're going to discuss the signal what we know and don't know about it what this new people was able to discover and then in the end I'll also add a bit of an opinion of what I actually think about this but I guess let's start with the signal itself because it's important to understand what was discovered and how it was found well back in the days in the 50s and actually even earlier than that several scientists including the iconic Frank Drake proposed that in theory 3 if there was an alien intelligence some router it would probably try to communicate with other intelligences using what's known as the hydrogen line and this is a quantum mechanics concept related to the idea of the spin of the electron where the spin change of a typical electron results in a production of a very specific Photon of approximate length of 21 centimeters equivalent to 1.42 gigahertz and so the scientists including Frank Greek reasoned that if there is an intelligence understanding all of these Concepts it might actually try to find someone else on the same intelligence level by trying to send the signals using this frequency and this was proposed by several independent researchers and so some of the earliest searches for extraterrestrial intelligence or really any signals were actually focusing on this particular frequency as a matter of fact over time this particular frequency became reserved specifically for Ryu astronomy along with several other frequencies that we cannot use for anything else but this was during the early days of radio astronomy and since then we've actually made a lot of discoveries with one major Discovery being that hydrogen line and hydrogen itself is literally all over the place some of the earliest discoveries of radio astronomy were actually related to unusual hits coming from the center of the Galaxy that the scientists later realized was caused by a lot of hydrogen present in this area I mean technically hydrogen is the most common element in the universe although to be more exact hydrogen can actually be in three different forms neutral hydrogen ionized or molecular hydrogen but there is still quite a lot of this neutral hydrogen that's able to produce these frequencies which would actually look something like this if you were to look at the typical Galaxy and so all of this in some sense is produced by hydrogen line but nevertheless during the early 50s 60s and 70s the scientists focused predominantly on the observations of this particular frequency with one of the observatories making an unusual Discovery in 1977. the actual printout of all of this looked like this and because it was so impressive astronomer Jerry Ackman who discovered this marked it as wow because we've never seen anything like this before but we're just is accurate as they show us well by converting this to something a little bit more digestible it would look something like this it shows us a radio signal with the sudden increase in amplitude that was detected during a 70 second window of the now shutdown Observatory known as Big Ear and those designations that you see the letters and the numbers that's just how the scientists used to Mark the intensity of the signal with the letter U representing the highest possible intensity in other words this could have actually been much stronger but the observatory had its limits and could not actually represent it even higher and the frequency of the signal was extremely close to the hydrogen line actually just a little bit different as if it was bullshifted or basically as if this whatever it was was moving at approximately 10 kilometers per second toward planet Earth but there was a problem with this observation first problem is that there was another telescope operating at this time and it didn't see anything from anywhere in this location if this was an intense signal coming from far away it should have been detected by something else and yet another problem is that it was just a little bit too intense this type of a signal is more likely to be coming from somewhere in the solar system unless it was some kind of a super powerful beam producing 1.4 gigahertz and Shining Direct by planet Earth and so it could have been actually coming from the solar system itself but not really planet Earth for one simple reason the length of the observation the length of the signal indicates that it was basically due to the rotation of the planet or in other words if you were to stand on the surface of planet Earth and if you were to basically just look at something far away it was coming from either the solar system or somewhere far it would probably last for about 72 seconds the padding of course on the width of the signal and so the signal in this sense was very likely coming from outside of planet Earth and since we're observing a gradual increase followed by a gradual decrease this kind of reinforces the idea of the rotation of the planet being responsible for the total length of the signal but because of the way that it was detected it seemed to be a continuous signal didn't really have any modulation or any potential communication signs in it nor was it really different enough to be considered an artificial signal to begin with because this just looks like a really intense hydrogen line signal potentially caused by something containing a lot of mutual hydrogen or maybe even caused by some kind of a natural object that we still don't understand but nevertheless they speak a lot of curiosity from the study scientists and they wanted to figure out if this could be possibly the first ever communication from an extraterrestrial intelligence but every single search to date especially a follow-up search of trying to find another signal coming from this region so far more or less came back completely empty but this recent search and this recent study focused on something else it focused on directly listening to Starks that seem to be extremely sun-like in their appearance and of course in the amount of energy they produce mostly because the chance of finding an Earth-like planet here might be just a little bit higher now it's obviously a pretty big assumption as a matter of fact we still barely understand how planets form even here in the solar system but because of the is ongoing mystery the scientists wanted to still give it a try and so since Alberto Caballero was able to identify this particular Star as very sunlike and located pretty much in that region where the wall signal most likely came from the region that resembles something like this the scientists focused their most powerful telescopes conducting the first targeted search for the wow signal by using some of the biggest telescopes the massive Green Bank telescope or the green Bank Observatory and the Allen telescope array that belongs to the city Institute with the observations lasting between 9 minutes for one telescope an hour and a half for the other and as you can imagine nothing was really discovered actually they haven't found any unusual radio frequencies coming from this particular star at all but there is obviously no current explanation now maybe it's because nobody was actually sending signals to us at this time and we just weren't listening at the right moment but since this is not the first time scientists have tried to find something in this location and they've actually listened to this location at least 50 separate times am I much more likely explanation or solution is that we're basically are just being a little bit too biased in assuming that this could be aliens for example let's start with a frequency of communication so okay Frank Drake did suggests that maybe 1.4 gigahertz is the best frequency to communicate with someone intelligent out there well here's my problem with that there have been several projects since then as a matter of fact quite a few like 20 I think where we try to send signals to basically other civilizations or other locations such as for example the cosmic Cosmic call 2 a simple response to an elemental message and a bunch of other ones that I've actually covered in one of the previous videos you can find in the description with of course the a receivable message being the most popular and the most famous one this is by the way the principle known as methi or messaging extraterrestrial intelligence but none of these signals were sent at that frequency not a single one all of them were sent at other frequencies for example 2.4 gigahertz for the receivable message and so either we're not practicing what we are preaching or maybe 1.4 gigahertz is just not the right frequency to communicate with anyone and for obvious reasons because hydrogen is everywhere and just like you wouldn't use water to try to communicate with someone in the ocean why would anyone use 1.4 gigahertz to communicate with another intelligence somewhere out there now that's my personal take on this there's no actual scientific basis or explanation that I have right now but it does seem like it's just a bias a bias to make an assumption that 1.4 gigahertz would in any way be extra terrestrial signal The Experience from Matty signals definitely indicates that the signal would probably be in some other frequency not actually used by pretty much anything and would actually simply include a lot of repetitions and a lot of unusual modulation that cannot be created naturally and has to be created by an intelligence but obviously the actual research is still not over as a matter of fact these scientists have also found two more sun-like stars in this region that could be also used in the future to try to search for signals coming from there as well all of these stars are actually pretty far away over 1500 light years away from us so even if we try to communicate with anyone in that region it would take approximately 3000 or actually like 4 000 years to hear back but the search goes on we still haven't found anything and still haven't heard anything and ever since the wall signal no other unusual radio signal has been ever detected to not have been explained naturally in some way actually even for the wow signal there's at least one natural explanation back from 2017 that suggests that it could have been caused by a couple of comets possibly releasing hydrogen clouds that might have actually created these particular observations now not everyone accepted this explanation but it is viable nevertheless and so essentially we're back to the Fermi Paradox we don't seem to hear anyone we don't really know if there's anyone out there and it's looking more and more like maybe humanity is the only intelligent species in the nearby vicinity but we'll actually talk about other interpretations of the farming Paradox in some of the upcoming videos that are going to be released in the next few months on that note subscribe share this with someone who has learned about space and Sciences check out all the relevant links in the description below and maybe support this channel on patreon by during General membership or by buying the wonderful person t-shirt you can find in the description stay wonderful I'll see you tomorrow and as always bye [Music] [Music] thank you thank you foreign

Channel: Anton Petrov

Views: 147,418

Keywords: wow! signal, wow signal, seti, seti signal, meti, meti signal, extraterrestrial life, anton petrov, science, physics, astrophysics, astronomy, universe, whatdamath, what da math, technology, blc-1, blc 1, blc, technosignature, Proxima b, proxima centauri, Breakthrough Listen, 982.002 MHz, 982.002, alien, aliens, alien signal, proxima centauri signal, proxima b signal, did we find aliens, extraterrestrial intelligence, extraterrestrial, #seti, #BLC1, #BreakthroughListen, 1420mhz

Id: JOQMTVMKwxM

Length: 11min 52sec (712 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 12 2022