Trevor Collins

Hydrogen masers.

Let me break this down for you.

We all know what lasers are.

Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.

Or as us kids on the street like to call it, little shiny things that you try to shine in your friend's eyes, right?

You hit a button and a perfectly lined up wavelength of light comes out perfectly narrow.

It doesn't dissipate.

It's not an array.

It's a perfect line.

And so you get a laser point.

There's a thing called a maser.

which is the same thing, but instead of light, visible light, it's microwave.

So picture like a laser pointer, but it's way more powerful and it's made of microwaves.

You point that at someone, they might explode.

I don't know, but that's what we're going to talk about here.

Okay.

In August of 2024, there was a team led by Abel Mendez of the Arecibo WOW project

This project focused on the search for transient radio signals similar to the WOW signal.

That was what they were after.

The signal was so unique, so interesting that this project focused entirely on discovering radio signals like it.